The performance of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) deployed for Internet access in rural settings is affected by several factors. Typically, deployments in African domains use cheap and computationally constrained devices with challenges such as power fluctuations, gateway congestion, VSAT communications asymmetry and low bandwidth, which affects throughput under dynamic scenarios. Caching methods can offer improvement for content availability to ensure a reliable quality of experience (QoE) for rural dwellers. Primarily, we integrate a modified multicast technique and overhearing for object caching and cache dissemination. We proposed a Distributed Overheard-object Caching Approach (DOCA) and evaluated the performance employing simulations. The outcome shows significant improvements over the random-path-cache-request (RPCR) strategy with increased data availability and reduced communication cost regarding response time for the outlined rural scenarios. Moreover, the optimization of gateway load helps to conserve network resources such as bandwidth and nodal energy considerably.

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) has remained an alternative to providing telecommunication services in many rural parts of industrialized and developing countries. However, the suitability of existing rural mesh technologies in industrialized countries and how it fits emerging remote areas in developing countries is in doubt. While the architectures are similar; subtle technical differences impact mesh performances of rural deployments in developing countries. In this paper, the research focus describes generic rural settings via the taxonomy of the domains' characteristic. The authors present a survey of a few IEEE 802.11-based rural WMNs deployments in real-life scenarios over a decade between 2003 and 2013. In particular, the study offers an evaluation and critical analysis of a few design components of these deployments. Finally, it identifies a plethora of common patterns, technical variations, challenges and unique features as well as some future directions to improve the reliability and resilience of WMN deployments in rural Africa.