[OLSR-users] Subnetting an OLSR mesh

[Dan]

Hi All,

I'm involved in the Melbourne Wireless community network, and I'm thinking
of a way of implementing OLSR as an option for our node-owners.  We have
about 150 active online nodes across the whole city presently - so I'm
thinking that just creating one gigantic mesh subnet isn't going to work
because we already have too many nodes for one mesh - and we're only going
to get bigger, especially if OLSR proves popular.

Would it be a good idea to start by establishing multiple meshes across the
city?  Each mesh would be a subnet of our 10.10.0.0/16 network.  How easy is
it to establish routing between the meshes?  Are there any other advantages
and drawbacks to this approach that I should be aware of?

Can a node with a single wireless interface act as an OLSR gateway between
two meshes?  Could it have two IP addresses - one in one mesh subnet and one
in the other?  Would HNA4 need to be manually configured in this instance to
advertise a gateway from Mesh A to Mesh B and vise versa?  I want to keep
routing information separate between the meshes, so the nodes in each mesh
don't have to know about the nodes in the other mesh - they just see an
aggregated route for the other mesh.

Also, do you need to manually specify HNA4 gateways if the node has two
wireless interfaces?  One mesh might use Channel 1 and one could use Channel
11.  If OLSR was running on this node, does the option exist to have all the
individual host routes redistributed, or aggregated as a single larger
route?

Cheers,

Dan