mesh networking as a kernel module 802.11s

Posted August 21st, 2008 by samiam

If someone has some spare ath5k (atheros) or bcm (broadcom) cards and linux kernel hacking skills

want to play this might be fun

http://www.open80211s.org/index.html

for the big picture check this out

http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/Reports/tgs_update.htm

open 802.11s \o/

On August 26th, 2008 adhoc says:

well this is a bit of good news. when i was looking at this two years ago it was very much in its infancy.. i have a couple of bcm43xx minipci cards sitting on a shelf at home. time to dig out the pci bridge and have another crack at that =)

this does also mean that the linksys and R100routers might be able to run a more recent kernel and get the benefits of that go with that ...

Next question is, what are the available ath5k cards that we can buy to tinker with?

ath5k is designed with

On August 26th, 2008 DrGeforce3 says:

ath5k is designed with support in mind for any AR5xxx device.

AR5210 - 802.11a
AR5211 - 802.11ab
AR5212 - 802.11abg
AR5213 - 802.11abg
AR5414 - 80211abg

So just to get you started:
AR521x - CM9, SR2, SR5 and CM9 clone (shadey has this card)
AR541x R52, R52H, XR2, XR5, Senao 100mw and Senao 400mw

The AR541x cards may need testing as support doesn't read as 100% support yet.
So may be better to start off with the AR521x based cards first.

Which card for a peecee or R100?

On September 12th, 2008 adhoc says:

So, I'm thinking about replacing the cards in my R100's and populating the PCI bridge cards in my peecee router.

You suggest the AR521x ie the CM9 clone is the right path at the moment for local access points?

What would you suggest for backbone type links?

r100 has a broadcom bcm card already

On September 30th, 2008 samiam says:

I am pretty sure that you can get a firmware ready to go for a r100 with 802.11s built in broadcom card

see

http://www.open80211s.org/trac

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

# bcm4303 (802.11b-only chips, uses b43legacy)
# bcm4306 (Rev. 2 uses b43legacy, Rev. 3 uses b43)
# bcm4309 (only the 2.4GHz part)
# bcm4311 rev 1 / bcm4312
# bcm4311 rev 2 / bcm4312 (needs patches for 2.6.24)
# bcm4312 (only the 2.4GHz part)
# bcm4318

anyway this young chap is from orstralia and he likes 802.11s

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/OLPC-achieves-2km-range-in-802-11s-tests/0,130061791,339277912,00.htm?feed=pt_802.11s