To me it feels as the way the term is portrayed in the interface provided by Luci, even if the term itself is more general. When I opened the settings for the network automatically provisioned as Lan, the forms prompted me to choose static versus dynamic IP allocation, and such a choice is only meaningful in the context of a L3 network.
How could the node have an IP address if of its own if it shares an L2 link with the node connected to a router?
How could an L2 switch connect two L3 networks without performing routing?
WDS is a point to point layer 2 wireless extension method.
802.11s mesh is a fully autonomous layer 2 mac-routing protocol.
If you just have two devices, then there will be very little difference between WDS and 802.11s, except that:
Not all wireless drivers support 802.11s (eg Broadcom)
Not all wireless drivers support WDS (eg Broadcom)
WDS has to be set up for a particular pair of devices
802.11s can have the same config for any number of devices
TL;DR Make your own choice depending on the situation.
This is irrelevant, neither WDS nor 802.11s are designed to provide a "mobile" infrastructure (ie they are not like a cell phone network) .
That is the nature of the "daily" snapshots - things break. Use the official release unless you are experimenting/testing.
There might be slightly less overhead with WDS, but in general practice it would normally be unnoticeable. For some wireless drivers, it could be more of an issue perhaps.
Firstly I thought movement was highly significant because with 802.11s relative movement between the nodes and adding and subtracting nodes can result in reconfiguration in terms of paths, whereas with WDS this is not possible?
Otherwise, in what situations should one contemplate use of 802.11s rather than WDS? Can you give a couple of examples? Is the situation that WDS requires extension nodes to connect to fixed single base node, whereas with MESH you could have extensions from extensions?
Lan - local area network. This does not mean local area IP network.
Like I said "the simplistic view that all networks are IP networks, a view that is of course far from the truth". OpenWrt/Luci is not a UI for unknowledgeable home users - ie some knowledge is required - but the nature of it is that you can, with the right mind set, very rapidly learn.
Yes, you have the choice of adding IP support on top of the basic network configuration.
Because it provides the underlying L2 infrastructure that an L3 network requires.
This is true, but nodes become multi peer to multi peer link devices in the underlying infrastructure. If you move a node then the infrastructure will reconfigure itself for the new location. But if, for example, you put a node in your car and drive through the mesh "zone" then your car node will never establish a proper multi peer to multi peer link status.
If the hardware is 802.11s compatible, then consider it in all cases.
Pretty much. Also, WDS does not support the multi path redundancy that 802.11s gives you.
Thanks. Since your responses are so insightful, and I am likely testing your patience, but what about the typical home scenario in which there is very often just one main router and say two or three wireless extension points.
Would the following be reasonable:
if the main router sits approximately in the middle of the wireless extension points, use WDS (with all extensions points connected to the main router)
else, use 802.11s.
The main consideration being the geometry of the mesh and location of the router relative to access points. Since if the router is not located in the middle then this may hurt WDS.
Are there any studies on the relative throughputs between different technologies? I came across one but it was very outdated.
I need some further guidance on how to get an admin portal accessible on the mesh nodes not connected to the router by cable. Once I provision the 802.11s network, how do make the same node into a DHCP client?
If the hardware supports it, why use anything other than 802.11s? If you move things around you can indeed break WDS, whereas 802.11s will reconfigure itself.
Like I said, WDS probably has a slightly lower overhead, but is the difference noticeable? In most scenarios, no.
OLSR is an IP routing protocol that sits on top of a layer 2 infrastructure so is irrelevant as far as testing WDS against 802.11s, both of which are to provide the layer 2 links.
If you understand my suggestion of doing the initial configuration with an ethernet connection to your router, then all you need is an extra step or so.
When configuring, give the node a unique host name eg meshnode1
Then access the node by name eg https://meshnode1.lan should take you into Luci on the node even after putting it in place as a mesh node.
No. Why do you think so?
The bridge interface on the mesh node will be a dhcp client so it will get an IP address in exactly the same way that it did when configuring with an ethernet connection. This is independent of the mesh configuration. DHCP client does a layer 2 broadcast for DHCP servers - this is how DHCP works.
The 802.11s network joins the two bridge interfaces on either node, so any IP address assigned to one must be assigned to the other, at least according to my best understanding from all the of information presented so far. Then, it would be impossible to assign an IP address to one device but not to assign the same address to the other device.
It does not bridge the two nodes together into a single interface - rather it provides an infrastructure at layer 2 for all nodes to communicate.
This infrastructure has nothing to do with IP routing. Every node will have a mesh interface (bridged internally in the simplest case that we are discussing here), and this mesh interface will have a unique mac address. All the nodes in the mesh contribute to the "virtual switch" that is the mesh network.
The mesh network switches layer 2 packets from source to destination node in exactly the same way a real switch does - ie "routing" by mac address.
Much of the confusion arises from terminology. "Routing" does not exclusively mean "IP Routing". The mesh infrastructure does "MAC Routing".
So, if every mesh node is also a DHCP client then if there is a DHCP server somewhere on the mesh network, all the mesh nodes will receive an IP configuration - automatically.
So you are explaining the mesh network is, by analogy, as though the mesh nodes have a cabled connection (e.g. Ethernet) to the same switch (and also serving as switches for any clients connected to one or another)?
Any idea why mesh has been broken on snapshots for months on the RT3200? Basically what happens is that one mesh node stays apparently connected to mesh but transmit rate plummets down. And that mesh node becomes inaccessible until main router is rebooted.
The short answer is "no". I have no idea.
This is the nature of snapshots and is very particularly true for this particular device.
I assume you have set the required parameters for the mesh as indicated earlier (particularly mesh_gate_announcements and mesh_rssi_threshold)
From your screenshot it looks like you probably have a poor signal to noise ratio on the mesh link.
I also assume only your main router is an RT3200 and you use something else for your mesh nodes?
Try connecting a mesh node by ethernet to the RT3200 (disabling mesh on the RT3200 first).
Do your mesh nodes then work correctly ( assuming you have more than 1 of course )?
Three mesh nodes that are all RT3200. It worked perfectly for many months with snapshot upgrades and then something broke. I just left parameters as default. I think by default announcements is set true but threshold might be zero? Would that explain the issue?
WDS works fine. Here are the signal strengths today:
I think the default is off, but you can check using the iw utility.
It might be. The default is 0, which means "no restriction, try to connect even on a bad link"
Current snapshot works on other platforms so it is probably just the drivers used on this one. Like I said, this is the nature of snapshots - the developers working on this device will get round to 802.11s support in due course I am sure, given that you have reported it.
