PROJECT INTERIM REPORT EEL 5718 – COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS
Implementation of Wireless Mesh Network using
Alpine Linux
Neeraj Poddar, Komal Kasat
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville
Abstract - A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a
communications network made up of radio nodes
organized in a mesh topology. Mesh topology is a type of
networking wherein each node in the network may act as
an independent router, regardless of whether it is
connected to another network or not. It allows for
continuous connections and reconfiguration around
broken or blocked paths by “hopping” from node to node
until the destination is reached. In this project we intend to
implement a wireless mesh network by configuring Alpine
Linux on a laptop as a mesh node for wireless clients. This
will enable the users in vicinity to connect to the network
wirelessly and gain access to internet.
I. INTRODUCTION
In a wireless mesh network, the network
connection is spread out among dozens or even hundreds of
wireless mesh nodes that "talk" to each other to share the
network connection across a large area. Mesh nodes are
small radio transmitters that function in the same way as a
wireless router. Nodes use the common WiFi standards
known as 802.11a, b and g to communicate wirelessly with
users, and, more importantly, with each other. Each node
operates not only as a host but also as a router, forwarding
packets on behalf of other nodes that may not be within
direct wireless transmission of their destination. The biggest
advantage of wireless mesh networks as opposed to wired or
fixed wireless networks is that they are truly wireless. Most
traditional wireless access points still need to be wired to the
Internet to broadcast their signal. In a wireless mesh
network, only one node needs to be physically wired to a
network connection. That one wired node then shares its
Internet connection wirelessly with all other nodes in its
vicinity and hence the network grows.
Fig.1 Wireless Mesh Network
II. PROTOCOLS STUDIED
There are a large number of protocols that can be
implemented in mesh networking depending on the goals
and design criteria. The most common protocols, standards
and systems in the field of wireless mesh networks are
briefly described below:
AODV - Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector:
It is routing protocol designed for ad hoc mobile networks.
It builds routes between nodes only as desired by source
nodes and hence it’s an on demand algorithm. It maintains
these routes as long as they are needed by the sources.
AODV builds routes using a route request / route reply
query cycle. When a source node desires a route to a
destination for which it does not already have a route, it
broadcasts a route request (RREQ) packet across the
network. Nodes receiving this packet update their
information for the source node and set up backwards
pointers to the source node in the route tables. In addition to
the source node's IP address, current sequence number, and
broadcast ID, the RREQ also contains the most recent
sequence number for the destination of which the source
node is aware. A node receiving the RREQ may send a route
reply (RREP) if it is either the destination or if it has a route
to the destination with corresponding sequence number
greater than or equal to that contained in the RREQ. If this is
the case, it unicasts a RREP back to the source. Otherwise, it
rebroadcasts the RREQ. Nodes keep track of the RREQ's
source IP address and broadcast ID. If they receive a RREQ
which they have already processed, they discard the RREQ
and do not forward it.
As the RREP propagates back to the source, nodes set up
forward pointers to the destination. Once the source node
receives the RREP, it may begin to forward data packets to
the destination. If the source later receives a RREP
containing a greater sequence number or contains the same
sequence number with a smaller hopcount, it may update its
routing information for that destination and begin using the
better route.
As long as the route remains active, it will continue to be
maintained. A route is considered active as long as there are
data packets periodically travelling from the source to the
destination along that path. Once the source stops sending
data packets, the links will time out and eventually be
deleted from the intermediate node routing tables. If a link
break occurs while the route is active, the node upstream of
the break propagates a route error (RERR) message to the
source node to inform it of the now unreachable
destination(s). After receiving the RERR, if the source node
still desires the route, it can reinitiate route discovery.
OLSR Protocol:
The OLSR Optimized Link State Routing Protocol is a
proactive link state protocol. Being a proactive protocol
implies periodically sending packets to maintain information
about the network topology. Also, link state implies that it
broadcasts the list of the neighbors over the network. So
basically all nodes are aware of the neighbors of all the
nodes and hence the entire topology is known. All the routes
being known the shortest path to the destination can be
determined.
OLSR Protocol uses two packets: “hello” packets and “TC”
packets. “Hello” packets are used to build the neighborhood
of a node and at the same time “hello” packets are used to
compute the “multipoint” relays of a node. Multipoint relay
will permit the broadcast. In this figure, we have shown a
node with its neighbors and its two hop neighbors. A two
hop neighbors of a node is a neighbor of its neighbors. This
is not an existing neighbor. To obtain a complete broadcast,
it is sufficient that the packet be repeated by a convenient
subset of its neighbor. This subset must be computed in such
a way that all the two hop neighbor receive the packet. If
this requirement is achieved, it can be shown by induction
that a complete broadcast is obtained. Actually, this
technique provides a way to locally compute a spanning
tree.
The “TC” packets are sent periodically by a node. This
packet contains the list of its multipoint relay i.e. the subset
of nodes which make it possible to cover all its two hop
nodes. The “TC” packets are sent in broadcast and with the
multipoint relay rule only the multipoint relay nodes will
retransmit the packet. A sequence number is used to avoid
loops due to infinite retransmission of the packet. Another
field is used to allow knowing which of two “TC” packets is
the more up-to-date. Although a node does not send its
entire neighborhood in the “TC” packet, it can be shown that
this information is sufficient to build a topology of the net.
Fig.2 OLSR Protocol
MMRP Mobile Mesh Routing Protocol:
Mobile Mesh protocol contains three separate protocols,
each addressing a specific function:
1. Link Discovery
It is based on the “hello” protocol. Each interface
running the protocol periodically broadcasts a Hello
message containing its interface address and the addresses of
the interfaces that it has heard Hello messages from in the
previous period. This is sufficient for a node's interface to
discover all links incident to it as well as bidirectional links.
2. Routing
MMRP is based upon the link state approach and
allows us to build least cost paths between any source and
destination. Each "Link State Packet" (LSP) contains
various information including a unique router id and a list of
lists that contains each local interface address and a list of
the neighbor interface addresses which have links to it and
their corresponding costs. Also in the LSP are a list of
"External Route Advertisements" which enable the node to
advertise routes into the mobile cloud. One use of this is to
allow routers that have a wired connection to a fixed
network to advertise a default route for the mobile nodes.
Thus, we provide a mechanism for allowing mobile nodes to
gain external connectivity. Also, this mechanism can be
used by a wireless router to advertise a route for a collection
of hosts which are directly connected to it.
3. Border Discovery
Mobile Mesh Border Discovery Protocol
(MMBDP) is a novel mechanism that enables flow existing
outside the mobile cloud to be utilized. Other approaches to
mobile ad hoc networking ignore this possibility. If two or
more nodes in the mobile cloud each have a connection into
a fixed network (let's call these nodes "border" routers), then
the opportunity exists for mobile nodes to communicate with
other mobile nodes across the fixed network. This is
accomplished by setting up tunnels between the border
routers across the fixed network. The border discovery
protocol enables a border router to discover other border
routers and then set up tunnels with them.
III. CURRENT & FUTURE IMPLEMENTATIONS
We have been able to configure wireless on alpine
to connect to available networks via network authentication
and WPA encryption.
The steps involved are getting wlan0 interface up and
running. For this first the drivers of the wireless NIC should
be installed and the kernel should be able to identify it. If it
is not able to identify wlan0 then the driver needs to be
installed separately. Once wlan0 is up, by setting up the
network interfaces, then the wireless tools and wireless
supplicant packages are installed.
Then connect to the preferred network ESSID by searching
for available networks. If the network is encrypted then
WPA supplicant or WEP is used depending on network’s
encryption type.
Then restart the network and you can obtain two IP address
for each interface of eth0 and wlan0.
Next part involves creating an adhoc connection between
two laptops wirelessly and test if they are able to ping each
other. We tested two laptops by assigning them two static IP
addresses and ping each other using adhoc connection.
The next step is to set up bridge network between Ethernet
card and wireless card. We have been trying a few things but
presently have not been able to bridge the wired lan
connection and the wireless connection. Once the bridge is
established then we can have the adhoc connected laptop to
have internet access.
The final step is setting up mesh network by implementing
one of the protocols described above. This would enable the
third laptop which is connected in adhoc fashion to the
intermediate laptop to gain internet access. It would gain this
access via the laptop which is wired and has bridged
connection with wireless.
IV. REFERENCES
[1] Simulation Results of the OLSR Routing Protocol for
Wireless Network - Anis Laouti, Paul Muhlethaler,
Abdellah Najid, Epiphane Plakoo
[2] Ian F. Akyildiz, Xudong Wang, Weilin Wang - Wireless
mesh networks: a survey
[3] Jangeun Jun and Mihail L. Sichitiu - The Nominal
Capacity of Wireless Mesh Networks
[4] S.M. Chen, P, Lin, D-W Huang, S-R Yang - A study on
distributed/centralized scheduling for wireless mesh network
[5] http://www.wikipedia.org
[6]http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2004/01/22/
wirelessmesh.html
[7] http://wiki.alpinelinux.org
[8] http://hipercom.inria.fr/olsr/#intro

This mesh network topology can be achieved by making the

laptop with bridged connection have a master mode wireless
connection which enables it to act as an access point and
other laptops can connect to it. But presently we are trying
to establish the connection via adhoc mode.

We have been successful in connecting alpine to wireless

networks and make it work in adhoc mode. The bridging is
not yet working properly so after implementing the bridging
the mesh protocol has to be implemented and the setup has
to be verified.