Ths system goal are:

• To simplify configuration, provisioning, and management for small to medium size community network deployments.
• Wireless security on the edge using WEPi or WPAi-PSKi (or WPA-EAP). Interoperability of WPA implementation is a concern, but wireless NICs are prolific and can leverage NICi based crytography when needed.
• Central DHCPi IPi address allocation for the community attaching devices both wired and wireless.
• Secure the back haul network directly to border routers. This secure connection could be over multiple hops to the border router. The underlying mesh routing protocol and network topology select the best path to the border router.
• Routers within the mesh, periodically discover border routes that provide uplink access to the Internet and centralized DHCP services.
• Any router attempts to establish a compressed encrypted IP-tunnel VPNi with the border router. A router will repeat this process until a standby border router can be configured. The standby link can be used as a fallback route or load distributed connection. Packet ordering issues not with standing.
• Reduce the number bridges and tunnels required to implement the architecure. Inherently, these mechanisms are convient and simple to use, however these mechanisms add overhead to the performance as packets are continously copied, rewritten, and readdressed throughout their travels to the final destination .
• Make use of open source and open protocols when ever they are readily available.
• Remain as hardware agnositic as possible to maximize the choice of tools to the implementor when possible. Higher performance systems maybe more advantageous if not required for systems at the border points. Furthurmore radio cards with different performance and capability attributes are released every day.
• Create a set of monitoring, management, and analysis tools that can give operators and managers a single view of the network topology and simple way to manage the network.
• Develop a set of services that allows designers the choice to use IPv4 or IPv6 and the ability to have clients access the network using either in an attempt to provided a simple migration plan.