Mesh networking: olsrd? b.a.t.m.a.n.? OpenWRT?

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

On 2015-02-20 09:17, Curt Howland wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 5:20 PM, Patrick Flaherty <pflaherty at wsi.com> wrote:
>> If you do get it working, it would be a great talk at a meeting.
>
> Agreed.
>
> Mesh networking is interesting, but the implementations appear
> difficult to impossible at best.

That... may actually not be the case anymore....

When I posed the initial question, I was really sort-of grasping
for any leads; but now I've learned enough to at least identify
the different options, pick one, and even get one working.

It looks like the prime contenders for mesh mechanisms are
(roughly ordered in accord with the evolutionary timeline):

	- layer-3 OLSR mesh via olsrd
	- layer-3 B.A.T.M.A.N. mesh via batmand
	- layer-2 B.A.T.M.A.N. mesh via batman-adv
	- layer-1(!) mesh via 802.11s
	- layer-3 B.A.T.M.A.N. mesh via bmx


The 802.11s mesh turns out to be remarkably easy to get up and running,
following the HOWTO provided by open80211s project:

	https://github.com/o11s/open80211s/wiki/HOWTO

(how well it works is yet to be seen)


batman-adv appears to be more generalised than 802.11s:
batman-adv can be used to aggregate any collection
of layer-2 interfaces--including Wi-Fi (in infrastructure mode,
ad-hoc mode, or any other mode), wired ethernet, PPP links,
VPN links--where 802.11s (of course) can is usable only with
802.11 links (and then only with some chipsets).

Presumably 802.11s and batman-adv are the most transparent
options, since the other (layer-3) options rely on rearranging
the *IP* route tables....

It's still not yet obvious to me what to do about mobile nodes
moving between the mesh nodes at speed--i.e., just how quickly
the mesh can deal with the topology changing (or what knobs are
available for tuning that), or if it makes sense to include
traditional APs in the mix so that the roaming nodes just do
traditional client dissociation/association cycles, or how
to handle roaming nodes that aren't equipped to do mesh networking
themselves.....

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."