Hello Travis,
Hi Ladies and Gents,
I've built a three-node mesh network using cheap TP-Link TL-WDR3600 routers. They can do simultaneous 5.8GHz and 2.4GHz. I use the 5.8 for the backbone links between the nodes, and 2.4 to clients. The nodes are running OpenWRT and OLSRD.
This system mostly works well, but there are a couple of problems with it that I'm wondering if batman-adv would solve or make easier to solve:
- The backbone links cannot be better protected than WEP, a
limitation of OLSRD, 2) Gateway assignment is a manual process, which must be performed on every node in the mesh, referring to the single node connected to the WAN, 3) The manual gateway configuration of 2) prevents peer-to-peer communications between mesh clients, 4) Each node has its own /24 subnet. This causes problems when a device roams from one device's jurisdiction to another if the interface doesn't re-issue a DHCP request.
We're expanding the network, I've just bought another ten of these routers, and I'm going to spend some time assessing if batman-adv would be a better fit for our purposes. There will be a range of ios, android and windows devices connecting to the mesh.
My questions are as follows:
- Does batman-adv worth with WPA2 or better encryption?
you can use IBSS/RSN with wpa-supplicant, this is WPA2 encryption for Ad-Hoc. (BTW this would also work with olsr). It is available in recent kernels and OpenWRT trunk.
- Must every client to a batman-adv mesh have a daemon installed?
No, that's not required.
- Is it possible to separate different radio interfaces for different
purposes? I.E. 5.8 for backbone, 2.4 for clients.
Yes, you can instruct batman-adv to only use the 5.8 GHz interface. Just add the interfaces you want batman-adv to use.
- Can all nodes and clients on a mesh have an IP in the same subnet,
solving some of the roaming problems caused by bad interface settings or drivers?
Yes, that's one of the strong points of batman-adv compared to Layer3 routing daemons. Just put a DHCP server somewhere in your network, bridge everything, and enjoy a Layer2 broadcast domain with only one subnet, just as you would use it in a LAN. We also support fast roaming, so you can maintain connectivity when changing Access Points with only minimal outages.
We have a lot of documentation, you can get started at: https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide
if you have multiple gatways to the Internet check https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Gateways
Although this is not required if you only have one gateway.
Cheers, Simon