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

[maddog@li.org]

I have not been keeping up with what you have been doing, but if your target is moving, perhaps
what you want is Mobile IPv6 instead of "mesh", or a combination of the two.

Also, Andy Stewart, the former long-time head of the WPI Linux Group, and now the lead of the Chelmsford Linux
Meetup group gave a talk on Mesh Networking at the WPI group last month.  I was not able to attend due to travel,
but Andy is also into Ham Radio and Linux, so he may have been working on Mesh for some time.  I have copied him on this email.

I would love to learn more about Mesh, so if you guys were willing to put on a presentation and/or workshop after you get things sorted out, I would be happy to bring some RPis to it so we could experiment.

md

----- Original Message -----
Didn't the One Laptop Per Child project do mesh? 

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 1:17 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen < rozzin at hackerposse.com > wrote: 


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))))." 
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