[Olsr-dev] V4-via-v6, like in Babel?

[Linus Lüssing]

Hi,

Babeld and the Linux kernel got an interesting new feature which
allows routing IPv4 packets via IPv6 next hops:

https://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/babel-users/2022-March/003895.html
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9229

I wanted to ask if somebody more familiar with the technical details
of OLSR(v2) would know if a similiar approach would be doable with
OLSR/OLSRv2, too.

Background: Next to batman-adv the Gluon firmware framework had added
support for Babeld+l3roamd in 2018, but IPv6 only so far. While there
were some (unfinished) experiments with XLAT in the past afterwards
to get IPv4 working[0].

This year we had renwed interest to work on the Layer 3 parts in
Gluon thanks to / from people from FunkFeuer Graz. They're working
on getting OLSR running in Gluon [1][2][3][4].

For now development is focussing on getting OLSRv2 with IPv6
running and merged. But one of the next steps will be to get OLSRv2
running with IPv4 as well. And the new approach Babel offers sounds
pretty neat, which we would ideally like to use for both Babel and
OLSRv2 in Gluon, if it works well.

Cheers, Linus


[0]: https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/pull/1808
     -> "introduce XLAT, native IPv4 for clients"
[1]: https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/pull/2535
     -> "OLSRDv2 Support: Initial Meshing"
[2]: https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/pull/2418
     -> "WIP: OLSR v1 & v2 support"
[2]: https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon/pull/2553
     -> "Move common firewall rules to respective packages"
[3]: https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/community-packages/pull/23
     -> "ffgraz-ddhcpd: add package"