Hello All,
I have read a post that is “Beaglebone Black Wireless’s Wilink8 driver does not support the ad-hoc mode mesh networking anymore”. That is true? I think that Beaglebone black wireless cannot do below things, if it does not support the ad-hoc mode;
*BBBW cannot find the “best path” for routing packets in a mesh network over multiple hops?
*How can be determined the effective number of hop count, if ad-hoc is not supported?
*BBBW cannot do self-forming of topology when some nodes fall the non-line of sight position? (it cannot change topology dynamically)
If above functions are able to perform with BATMAN or OLSR only, without support of ad-hoc mode?
Best Regards,
On Sun, 27 Jan 2019 22:57:06 -0800 (PST), don_wrt
<tugay.doner@stu.ee.hacettepe.edu.tr> declaimed
the following:
*BBBW cannot find the "best path" for routing packets in a mesh network
over multiple hops?
Based upon the wikipedia article, B.A.T.M.A.N. is not designed for
"best path" routing -- packets get sent to whatever node a packet was
received from, regardless of what the overall route would be. If there is
only one reachable node (determined by receipt of broadcast announcements)
then that is the "best path" node. It is not clear what happens if multiple
nodes are received at any one location.
*How can be determined the effective number of hop count, if ad-hoc is not
supported?
Again, this does not seem to be a function of the protocol. Some
variation of "traceroute" might suffice.
*BBBW cannot do self-forming of topology when some nodes fall the non-line
of sight position? (it cannot change topology dynamically)
This would seem to depend upon the protocol stack being run, and maybe
the WiFi interface itself, as the protocol seems to depend upon receiving
undirected "pings" announcing each node. How that functions with WiFi
radios on specific frequencies I have no idea -- is the radio expected to
scan/capture packets on all channels, rather than lock to single channel?
Since the BeagleBones run Debian, have you tried installing the
packages (as described
Download - Open-Mesh - Open Mesh ) and seeing
what happens?
To add a little bit of background to this;
There are several posts on TI’s e2e forum stating that ad-hoc mode is no longer supported. In TI’s use cases ad-hoc was replaced by Wi-Fi Direct.
http://e2e.ti.com/support/wireless-connectivity/wifi/f/968/t/367550
TI supported 802.11s meshing (http://open80211s.org/) in the last driver release family (R8.7)
http://software-dl.ti.com/ecs/WiLink8/R8_7/exports/release_notes_R8_7.html
I have used that in builds from the TI SDK in the past.
However, in this post someone talks about getting the TI open80211s mesh working in a Debian based release
http://e2e.ti.com/support/wireless-connectivity/wifi/f/968/t/635441
I’d never actually heard of BATMAN before these questions. A quick scan of the documentation suggested that it could also work using AP+STA or AP+AP modes which are standard modes for the Wilnk8.
Iain
Hello,
I wonder that what happens when I try to reach to a node where it is in non-line of sight position for me. I have to make some number of ‘hops’ over nodes in my line of sight to reach to non-line of sight node for me. I wonder that, if ad-hoc is not supported, can I reach to node where it is in the non-line of sight position for me in a mesh - networking by using BBBW?
Best Regards
I was able to setup a mesh wifi network, but I did so with 802.11s, not BATMAN or OSLR. This does not require you to set the device in ad-hoc mode. It works out of the box on the BeagleBone Black Wireless with Debian 9.5 (Linux 4.14.71-ti-r80). I did the setup with the command line tool “iw”. Additional details here: https://e2e.ti.com/support/processors/f/791/t/780010
Very nice write up! I'll test this more this weekend, but I think we
can integrate this into "bb-wl18xx-wlan0.service" as another option
under /etc/default/bb-wl18xx so users can automate mesh on bootup..
Regards,
Dear Jairo,
Thank you for reply.
BBBW does not support ad-hoc mode.
Can you try to ping from BBBW-1 device to a BBBW-2 device where it is not located to somewhere directly seen by BBBW-1. So you need make a “hop” to reach to BBBW-2 by using another device. Insert a third BBBW between of first and second BBBW device. Be sure that BBBW-1 seen only BBBW-3 and BBBW-2 seen also only BBBW-3. So BBBW-1 is not seen by BBBW-2. In this test schema, let’s ping from BBBW-1 to BBBW-2 through BBBW-3 device.
I wonder such an above case is possible with BBBW?
Dear Jairo,
How many Beaglebone Black Wireless have you used in your mesh-network? Maybe 3 or 5 ?
10 is already maximum limit.
Thank you.