[Olsr-users] A preferred approach to bridging multiple radios/APs to extend mesh

[Ben West]

Hi All,

I realize that Henning's draft proposal for the LDEP (quoted below) would
effectively address the need I describe, but I am curious about existing
methods available for bridging multiple radios/APs to operate on the same
logical mesh.

  "Stateless RFC5444-based Dynamic Link Exchange Protocol (DLEP)", Henning
  Rogge, 4-Nov-12, <draft-rogge-stateless-rfc5444-dlep-00.txt>

    This document provides material for the discussion in the MANET WG
       about the Dynamic Link Exchange Protocol (DLEP).  This document
       reflects the authors' thoughts about how a stateless DLEP protocol
       compliant with RFC5444 could look like.

Because UBNT radios can be quite flexible about how (and more poignantly
how many) you strap them to a mast with minimal cabling, cf. their Beanstalk
illustrations <http://wiki.ubnt.com/BeansTalk_PoE_bridge>, I am curious
about wired bridging options between multiple APs, and what such options
can do to reduce hop loss and/or allow meshing on multiple channels.

That is, if you could connect the LAN ports of two radios together, could
you ...

1. Mount the radios on the same mast, but facing 180deg away from each
other (assuming directional antennas), to join two meshes that otherwise
don't overlap?  This neglects interference from overlapping fresnel zones,
but there are means<http://www.rfarmor.com/cart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=12>to
mitigate interference.

2. Same #1, but imagine now the meshes overlap geographically, yet operate
on different channels?

Since OLSRd could be (or is) quite capable of routing across hybrid
topologies like these, and since zealous IPv6 addressing of all nodes could
eliminate awkward NAT schemes, I'm curious about options for building
efficient bridges between two APs.  Especially, I'd be curious to hear what
other OLSRers have done.  How have you seen SmartGateway operate over such
topologies, for example?

OpenWRT has Layer 3 tools like relayd, but there is also a simpler tool
call trelay, which looks appealing:
https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/package/trelay/Makefile

Thanks.


-- 
Ben West
http://gowasabi.net
(spam-protected)
314-246-9434
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