Hi Simon,
On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 07:22:51PM -0700, Simon Wong wrote:
Let there be 2 wifi clients, client 1 and 2. Initially, both clients are wirelessly attached to node A. Client 2 can ping 1 and the nodes. Client 2 can also Telnet into node A and B, so all is fine.
I take client 2 and roam to node B. Client 2 can no longer ping client 1 and that is the issue.
At the Wireless Battle Mesh a few months ago we've been discussing just such a (until now?) hypothetical problem. Maybe it applies here, maybe it doesn't:
It could be a problem with a not yet updated MAC address table in the bridge, therefore the bridge on node A not forwarding ICMP requests from client 1 towards client 2.
Questions: Are your clients using IPv4, IPv6 or both? Are your clients issuing gratuitous ARP replies or ICMPv6 unsolicited Neighbor Advertisements upon roaming? Is this a permanent problem or are clients 1 and 2 able to reach each other again after a while? In your tests, did client 1 ping client 2 or the other way round?
What you could try to check whether it is a problem with the learning of the bridge is transforming them to stupid hubs on node A and node B:
$ brctl setageing br0 0
Cheers, Linus