Wireless Beowulf?

[John Hearns]

On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Michael Worsham wrote:

> Has anyone researched using the wireless 11a (or soon to be released 11g)
> protocol as an idea for simplistic beowulf design? I know it won't be as
> fast as fiber, but rather than having 5,000+ wires hanging everywhere,
> perhaps it could be a viable idea in a closed-room location?
> 

On 802.11b, in Europe, there are 13 radio channels available. Guess for
a lot of ndes communicating this wouldn't be that hot!

But this is a nice idea!

Me, I think an interesting use of wireless with clusters is for 
out-of-band management and diagnosis.
I certainly have found it useful to have my laptop with a wireless card in
handy - in a massive server room this saves running in and out to (say)
do some pings or ssh sessions, or to check things on the Web.
Cyclades also have terminal servers with built-in wireless - which I think
could prove very useful if the main network or a big router goes kaput!