Hi Bruce,

This reply is for you and anyone else interested in dipping their toe into the MESH.  Yes the Microtik is a good training device and will help you figure out some basic networking skills you’ll need to plan out an RF network.  The minimum requirement is a decent internet connection (I would say at least 10mb down and 1mb up as a low minimum) and a router which you can do port forwarding on. Port 5525 is used for connections to other “nodes”. Your Microtik would be one of there “nodes”.  Next you need a tunnel which is sort of like a VPN tunnel except that unlike VPNs it’s not “secure”. In fact nothing is allowed to be secured or encrypted on the MESH to be in compliance with FCC rules (generally).  We’ll get into some possible exceptions later. 

The AREDN mesh operates on ham frequencies. Although your connection will initially be via the Internet, most of the nodes on the other side of that connection are communicating via RF. 

You can do a lot with just a tunnel abs you can be useful to DST even without a full RF link. For example, you can have an IP phone. Your OOMA device is an IP -based phone device. The concept is nearly the same.    You can also send Winlink messages via the MESH.  So there’s just a couple of many things you can do. You can read the docs in the Aredenmesh.org for more ideas. 

Don’t worry so much about building out a network of your own just yet.  Get the fundamentals down first. Explore the mesh and I’m certain you’ll start to see the light.

I’m willing to provide a brief tour of the MESH if you want to see it without investing anything  

—-mark