Hello,
I have recently discovered batman-adv and am very interesting in getting it running on a custom embedded linux board we are developing.
I have a couple of questions:
1. Will batman-adv work over 802.15.4 ?
I have a microchip MRF24J40 802.15.4 module integrated on my linux board (3.7.0-rc6), and can bring up wpan-phy0 and lowpan0 interfaces.
2. Can batman-adv work with either of these interfaces ?
I tried configuring these interfaces using 'batctl' but it complains that they are an unsupported type. 'iwconfig' reports these interfaces as having 'no wireless extensions' which I suspect is the issue.
Please let me know if running b.a.t.m.a.n. over 802.15.4 is feasible.
Thanks,
-Randy
On Monday 19 November 2012 20:25:34 Randy Graham wrote: [...]
- Will batman-adv work over 802.15.4 ?
[...]
- Can batman-adv work with either of these interfaces ?
I tried configuring these interfaces using 'batctl' but it complains that they are an unsupported type. 'iwconfig' reports these interfaces as having 'no wireless extensions' which I suspect is the issue.
No, batman-adv works on 802.3 compatible interfaces (aka ARPHRD_ETHER) which provide special mac behaviour. This has nothing to do with the wireless extensions (which are deprecated anyway).
Please let me know if running b.a.t.m.a.n. over 802.15.4 is feasible.
802.15.4 has the type ARPHRD_IEEE802154 for its fake hard interfaces. So you need an "ethernet emulation" layer on top of it to use it with batman-adv. I don't know whether the mac layer works well enough in theory to be used with batman-adv.
Kind regards, Sven
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 09:27:39AM +0100, Sven Eckelmann wrote:
On Monday 19 November 2012 20:25:34 Randy Graham wrote: [...]
- Will batman-adv work over 802.15.4 ?
[...]
- Can batman-adv work with either of these interfaces ?
I tried configuring these interfaces using 'batctl' but it complains that they are an unsupported type. 'iwconfig' reports these interfaces as having 'no wireless extensions' which I suspect is the issue.
No, batman-adv works on 802.3 compatible interfaces (aka ARPHRD_ETHER) which provide special mac behaviour. This has nothing to do with the wireless extensions (which are deprecated anyway).
Please let me know if running b.a.t.m.a.n. over 802.15.4 is feasible.
802.15.4 has the type ARPHRD_IEEE802154 for its fake hard interfaces. So you need an "ethernet emulation" layer on top of it to use it with batman-adv. I don't know whether the mac layer works well enough in theory to be used with batman-adv.
And other than these technical details, I would say that batman-adv is not a very good protocol for 802.15.4/low-power wireless. It might need heavy restructuring if you really want to use it in a deployment.
However, I'm pretty familiar with 802.15.4, therefore if you really want to go ahead, we can even discuss further what batman-adv would need and what would not.
Regards,
Thanks for all of your replies, you have answered my questions !
It seems that batman-adv is not suitable for a 802.15.4 mesh network, so I guess I'll need to look elsewhere.
Does anyone know of a non-proprietary mesh network stack for 802.15.4 on linux ? I know that zigbee has not made into the kernel due to GPL issues.
Thanks again for your help.
-Randy
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 1:24 AM, Antonio Quartulli ordex@autistici.org wrote:
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 09:27:39AM +0100, Sven Eckelmann wrote:
On Monday 19 November 2012 20:25:34 Randy Graham wrote: [...]
- Will batman-adv work over 802.15.4 ?
[...]
- Can batman-adv work with either of these interfaces ?
I tried configuring these interfaces using 'batctl' but it complains that they are an unsupported type. 'iwconfig' reports these interfaces as having 'no wireless extensions' which I suspect is the issue.
No, batman-adv works on 802.3 compatible interfaces (aka ARPHRD_ETHER) which provide special mac behaviour. This has nothing to do with the wireless extensions (which are deprecated anyway).
Please let me know if running b.a.t.m.a.n. over 802.15.4 is feasible.
802.15.4 has the type ARPHRD_IEEE802154 for its fake hard interfaces. So you need an "ethernet emulation" layer on top of it to use it with batman-adv. I don't know whether the mac layer works well enough in theory to be used with batman-adv.
And other than these technical details, I would say that batman-adv is not a very good protocol for 802.15.4/low-power wireless. It might need heavy restructuring if you really want to use it in a deployment.
However, I'm pretty familiar with 802.15.4, therefore if you really want to go ahead, we can even discuss further what batman-adv would need and what would not.
Regards,
-- Antonio Quartulli
..each of us alone is worth nothing.. Ernesto "Che" Guevara
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 03:37:17PM -0800, Randy Graham wrote:
Thanks for all of your replies, you have answered my questions !
It seems that batman-adv is not suitable for a 802.15.4 mesh network, so I guess I'll need to look elsewhere.
Does anyone know of a non-proprietary mesh network stack for 802.15.4 on linux ? I know that zigbee has not made into the kernel due to GPL issues.
We are going OT, but it is worth an answer. :) As far as I know there is nothing for multi-hop routing on 802.15.4 in the linux kernel. So I think you need to implement something yourself. You can either start a port of RPL (e.g. from Contiki) or you can start an experiment and try to adapt batman-adv to run on top of those interfaces. I would say that the second is a really juicy topic. If you do so, we could also think about having a mixed mesh network, part which runs low power and part which runs common 802.11.
Cheers,
On Tuesday, November 20, 2012 12:25:34 Randy Graham wrote:
I tried configuring these interfaces using 'batctl' but it complains that they are an unsupported type. 'iwconfig' reports these interfaces as having 'no wireless extensions' which I suspect is the issue.
The batman-adv kernel module checks for interface compatibility and only if an interface is suitable the corresponding /sys/class/net/$iface/batman-adv subfolder is created. It is that folder batctl tries to find in order to enable batman-adv on the given interface.
Cheers, Marek
b.a.t.m.a.n@lists.open-mesh.org
-
Antonio Quartulli -
Marek Lindner -
Randy Graham -
Sven Eckelmann