[Olsr-users] IEEE 802.11s

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> According to my understanding 802.11s is more like a switching technology

I'm not sure what you mean.  Switching is not fundamentally different
from routing, it just works at a different protocol layer.

Contrary to what some people seem to believe, modern switches do use
a proper routing protocol.  Ethernet switches (IEEE 802.1D) use the
Spanning Tree Protocol, and Token Ring switches use a form of source
routing with path reversal.

So in some sense IEEE 802.11s is a standard for switches, except that
it uses a much more refined routing protocol.

> Since swithces broadcast they cannot be used between two different
> network like olsr can.

This is wrong.  IEEE 802.11s has provisions for integrating non-mesh
links.  But your basic intuition is right, the mechanism is much more
involved than the ones that can be used at layer 3.  (Basically
802.11s uses a degenerate form of source routing in that case.)

Obviously, this will only work if the non-mesh networks use the
IEEE 802.2 frame format (Ethernet will work, but PPP won't, at least
not without some extra effort).

                                        Juliusz