Quick question for you all:

Imagine I have a mesh network of, let's say, 9 WDS points arranged in a 3x3 grid as such:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

I want to communicate from point 1 to point 9 (via any route it desires).  Do all the other points have to get involved with the communication or do they not have to participate?  I'm just wondering how efficient the WDS algorythm is - does it involve every registered node or just enough to get the job done?

WDS is a simple point to point link, we bridge those links to create a WDS network.

So, the answer to your question would depend on where you created the links and how intelligent the bridge code is at keeping track of mac addresses.

The real problem will be the fact that all the APs need to be on close enough channels that they can communicate with their WDS peers. Normally I'd say to set all the APs to the same channel, but you can have some slight variation in channels if you're willing to sacrifice some signal strengh. In other words an AP on channel 6 can communicate with the overlapping channels 4 and 8 to some degree but your best communication would be on channel 6.

Not sure if I understand your reply.  You mention "point-to-point".  I thought mesh networks were possible with a bunch of WDS points set to lazy WDS.  Is this true?

If so, do all points of the mesh participate in a communication (like a hub) or only the necessary points that get the packet from sender to receiver (like a switch)?

Thanks for your help.

Define "mesh network" more precisely first.

Simple Lazy WDS will have everything on one channel, and indeterminate behavior. Particularly if your network is cross-connected you can have network loops which will cause it to crash.  There are technical fixes like STP to address the loop problem.

Many people seem to go with OLSR for building what you problably envision.  You'll need to do a bunch more reading. Google is your friend.

WDS is manually configured, so you will need to determine exactly which nodes will speak with eachother. Even using lazywds, there is still need for manual configuration of the nodes connection to the lazy nodes. If everything is set to lazy, nothing will attempt a connection. Lazy accepts all incoming wds connections. When configuring the network, you also need to be sure to avoid loops, or at least turn on STP on the nodes involved in the loop.

I had a wds network which I just started to convert to olsr, which is supposed to be fairly robust, and automatically configures routing when changes in the network occur. I haven't actually gotten olsr to work yet (message saying "No interfaces detected!" ) but I discovered my network is working fine in adhoc mode since I don't have multihops yet.  It is configured like this right now.

Client---Wrt(Adhoc) -  -  - Wrt(Adhoc)---Wrt(Router)---ADSL

Surprisingly, the adhoc Wrt boxes (that ARE configured with BRIDGING), seem to work nicely for bridging the segments attached via Adhoc.

(Last edited by joebush on 4 Jun 2006, 14:27)

What about the adhoc with OLSR, does it provide a full 54mbps bandwith ?

Because for 1 WDS your bandwith is divided by 2

Much better performance since not all nodes are broadcasting each packet. It is a routed network, and is therefore much more scalable.

(Last edited by joebush on 7 Jun 2006, 14:42)

But u need also a software on the PCs connected to your WLAN, dont you ?

I tried to set up OLSRD few month ago and i dont know if it s really better than WDS even if it s more performant

Hi,
Can you post the network,wireless and dhcp config files to do that?

Client---Wrt(Adhoc) -  -  - Wrt(Adhoc)---Wrt(Router)---ADSL

Thanks

Davide

Sorry for bringing up this discussion after a while:

does OLSR work on WDS? Or does WDS set "dummy" Point-To-Point connections? I found this: http://wiki.openwrt.org/oldwiki/OpenWrt … tworks.p2p WDS routed networks. what?

WDS is a simple point to point link, we bridge those links to create a WDS network.