I am looking for some advice about a system I am going to build.  This is my first time using openWRT, and I need a little help understanding what it does and does not do.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I need nodes that will mesh route (perhaps using OLSR) and *simultaneously* serve as access points to laptops etc.  Some of the nodes will have wired internet connections, but many will get their access through the mesh.  I would also need to incorporate nodes that are open access points, but aren't OLSR capable (like free access points that I don't control).  So eventually all traffic ends up going to the internet through one of my nodes, or perhaps free access points.

My understanding is that Kamikaze can serve as a mesh router and an AP through virtual interfaces.  Presumably each node has two interfaces, one is the access point interface, and the other does the mesh routing (in ad-hoc mode?)

Are virtual interfaces a function of hardware, drivers, or openwrt?  For instance, I was thinking of doing something similar with a gumstix platform.  They have OLSR running on the platform, but I don't know if the Marvel 8385 supports the virtual interfaces.  I also have a bunch of Meraki nodes that have Atheros chips that should support virtual interfaces (they certainly do with their own firmware).  Which platform should I be looking at?

My last requirement is that I will need some extra storage (a few GB USB flash will do).  I was thinking of using a USB capable router and sticking a USB flash key on it, but if I use the Gumstix I can easily put a CF card in.  The Meraki is more problematic, as I would probably need to attach a gumstix via ethernet to it anyway to act as a file server.

Or do I have all of this backwards?  Any advice?

Thanks!

check this out: http://sar.informatik.hu-berlin.de/rese … of_net.htm
pretty good use of the USB & OpenWRT capable wgt634u router

Interesting.   Thanks for th pointer, I have started reading through it.

I guess what I am looking for is some more technical information.

What hardware supports virtual interfaces?  All of the OpenWRT hardware?

And if you are routing over nodes that ave one interface as an AP, what mode is the other interface typically in, and can it still connect to an open AP as well as other mesh nodes?

atheros (madwifi) and prism (hostap) support virtual interfaces of the type that would be useful for this, hostap just does it for wds. with madwifi you would use a virtual ap in either managed or repeater mode, and can connect to an open ap with it. other drivers may support this but i'm not aware of any.  the meraki firmware is of course using linux and madwifi, based on openwrt with a few modifications to suit their purposes.  if someone were to write an sd driver for 2.6 (hint, hint), you could use that for storage similar to the wrt54g mod described on the wiki (the header on the left side of the meraki board near the memory chip provides easy access to gpio pins for custom work).  a wgt634u would be pretty ideal since it has an atheros minipci card and usb2 (for storage), if you can find some

Great, SD is totally possible.  Do you happen to know anything about the current use of the GPIOs?  Are they only used on boot etc?  People in my group have enough experience with SD to pull this off.

I don't know about the use of GPIOs in the Meraki, but the Fonera is quite close to the Meraki in terms of design. Most GPIO pins have been located on the Fonera and could be used for SD. There is more information on those pins here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Fo … -Card_hack (sorry about posting DD-WRT links here ^^). A gpio driver is here: http://fghhgh.150m.com/ - there is also a thread on GPIO on atheros SoCs here, from the author of the driver I think. Maybe this information is of help to you.