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:
1) 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:
1) Does batman-adv worth with WPA2 or better encryption? 2) Must every client to a batman-adv mesh have a daemon installed? 3) Is it possible to separate different radio interfaces for different purposes? I.E. 5.8 for backbone, 2.4 for clients. 4) 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?
Thanks, Travis.
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
Hello Travis.
On 11/08/2013 03:42 AM, tjhowse wrote:
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?
Yes but you need some changes such as replacing wpad-mini by wpad and probably mac80211 and hostpad depending on which openwrt release you will be using to do all this.
- Must every client to a batman-adv mesh have a daemon installed?
Every node must have batman-adv
- Is it possible to separate different radio interfaces for different
purposes? I.E. 5.8 for backbone, 2.4 for clients.
Yes and you can even have VAP's
- 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.
Let me know about your progress regarding these changes if you encounter some issues because there are some and i have also being trying to solve them.
Thanks, Travis. .
On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 05:57:51AM -0500, cmsv wrote:
- Must every client to a batman-adv mesh have a daemon installed?
Every node must have batman-adv
Be careful to do not confuse him. He asked about *clients*, and clients are not required to run batman-adv.
Cheers,
Perhaps i misunderstood.
On 11/08/2013 06:07 AM, Antonio Quartulli wrote:
On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 05:57:51AM -0500, cmsv wrote:
- Must every client to a batman-adv mesh have a daemon installed?
Every node must have batman-adv
Be careful to do not confuse him. He asked about *clients*, and clients are not required to run batman-adv.
Does he mean clients as the people connecting to the access points with their computer or node clients that connect to mesh node routers that are servers and or gateways and are part of the backbone?
Cheers,
On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 06:12:26AM -0500, cmsv wrote:
Perhaps i misunderstood.
On 11/08/2013 06:07 AM, Antonio Quartulli wrote:
On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 05:57:51AM -0500, cmsv wrote:
- Must every client to a batman-adv mesh have a daemon installed?
Every node must have batman-adv
Be careful to do not confuse him. He asked about *clients*, and clients are not required to run batman-adv.
Does he mean clients as the people connecting to the access points with their computer or node clients that connect to mesh node routers that are servers and or gateways and are part of the backbone?
You are talking about a very specific topic: the Gateway feature. He was asking about the general infrastructure. So clients are user devices.
Cheers,
On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 06:12:26AM -0500, cmsv wrote:
Perhaps i misunderstood.
On 11/08/2013 06:07 AM, Antonio Quartulli wrote:
On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 05:57:51AM -0500, cmsv wrote:
- Must every client to a batman-adv mesh have a daemon installed?
Every node must have batman-adv
Be careful to do not confuse him. He asked about *clients*, and clients are not required to run batman-adv.
Does he mean clients as the people connecting to the access points with their computer or node clients that connect to mesh node routers that are servers and or gateways and are part of the backbone?
With BATMAN you can split the network into two parts. The mesh infrastructure, a.k.a the mesh nodes, and devices using the infrastructure, a.k.a, the clients.
All nodes in the mesh infrastructure need to run batman-adv, so that they play an active part in the mesh. With the hardware described here, one of the two interfaces is running in Adhoc mode and is part of the mesh.
The other interface is run in plain old access point mode. The devices using the mesh infrastructure connect to the access point as a station. Thus they don't need batman-adv. They can also roam from access point to access point, and the mesh infrastructure will work out delivering the frames to the right access point and so to the client.
Andrew
b.a.t.m.a.n@lists.open-mesh.org
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Andrew Lunn -
Antonio Quartulli -
cmsv -
Simon Wunderlich -
tjhowse