Maximum number of connected beaglebones per single beaglebone

Dear All,

At most how many beaglebone black wireless modules have you ever connected to each other at the same time within a mesh network ? There are some constraints for TI Wilink8 chip. One of them is maximum number of connected peers per single peer in the network. It is 10 in the user guide doc. Is it a Wilink8 hardware caused limit or driver limit? What will be possible results when connecting more than 10 beaglebones at the same time within a network?

Thank you.

Hi,
The limit is in the RAM on the WiLink8. There is only enough to hold the state information for 10 connections.
The 11th connection will just fail.
Iain

Hello,

Is it on-chip RAM size limit inside the WiLink8 chip? So, it is a hardware-limit. In this case, a mesh network with more than 10-BBBWs can not installed? But, why did TI have written an expression in the WiLink8 user’s guide “Maximum number of nodes in the entire network is 32” ? So this expression is not true. Or maybe it means that yes there can be 32-nodes in the network but only 10-of them are BBBWs and others 22-nodes are not BBBWs, such an another kind of wireless nodes?

Thank you.

Yes it it is WiLink8 on-chip RAM that is a hardware limit.

I didn’t write the documentation so this is my interpretation.

  • The mesh can contain up to 32 nodes in the entire network. My guess is that this is a limitation in the open80211 software for the number of nodes that can be kept track of. I have a memory of a conversation that the 32 is actually not a hard limit but actually more of a test limit in that the test network had 32 nodes. So TI said max 32 as that is all that had been tested.
  • With in the mesh network each node can maintain a connection to its 10 nearest nodes. This is only a subset of the nodes in the mesh and the mesh will work as long as each node can see at least two other nodes.

To me this makes sense as the main purpose of a mesh is to extend the reach of the Wi-Fi. If all 32 nodes were in range of the AP then it would be much simpler to just connect them all as stations.
Iain

Hello,

TI’s chipset on the BBBW has constraint of 10-nodes for track. But I think this is not a problem for a network consists of 32-nodes or higher. Right? Just, one node can not track the 11-nodes, but it can track 10-nodes at most.

Thank you.