Implementation of the upcoming Wireless Mesh standard, 802.11s, on the

net80211 wireless stack. This work is based on the March 2009 D3.0 draft
standard. This standard is expected to become final next year.
This includes two main net80211 modules, ieee80211_mesh.c
which deals with peer link management, link metric calculation,
routing table control and mesh configuration and ieee80211_hwmp.c
which deals with the actually routing process on the mesh network.
HWMP is the mandatory routing protocol on by the mesh standard, but
others, such as RA-OLSR, can be implemented.

Authentication and encryption are not implemented.

There are several scripts under tools/tools/net80211/scripts that can be
used to test different mesh network topologies and they also teach you
how to setup a mesh vap (for the impatient: ifconfig wlan0 create
wlandev ... wlanmode mesh).

A new build option is available: IEEE80211_SUPPORT_MESH and it's enabled
by default on GENERIC kernels for i386, amd64, sparc64 and pc98.

Drivers that support mesh networks right now are: ath, ral and mwl.

More information at: http://wiki.freebsd.org/WifiMesh

Please note that this work is experimental. Also, please note that
bridging a mesh vap with another network interface is not yet supported.

Many thanks to the FreeBSD Foundation for sponsoring this project and to
Sam Leffler for his support.
Also, I would like to thank Gateworks Corporation for sending me a
Cambria board which was used during the development of this project.

Reviewed by:	sam
Approved by:	re (kensmith)
Obtained from:	projects/mesh11s

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/share/man/man4/wlan.4 b/share/man/man4/wlan.4
index dffefab..c3a2b16 100644
--- a/share/man/man4/wlan.4
+++ b/share/man/man4/wlan.4
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@
 .\"
 .\" $FreeBSD$
 .\"
-.Dd May 15, 2009
+.Dd July 8, 2009
 .Dt WLAN 4
 .Os
 .Sh NAME
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ support.
 .Nm
 supports multi-mode devices capable of
 operating in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and supports numerous
-802.11 standards: 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n.
+802.11 standards: 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, and 802.11s (Draft 3.0).
 The WPA, 802.11i, and 802.1x security protocols are supported
 through a combination of in-kernel code and user-mode applications.
 The WME/WMM multi-media protocols are supported entirely within
@@ -83,6 +83,8 @@ A client station in an infrastructure bss
 (i.e. one that associates to an access point).
 .It Cm hostap
 An access point in an infrastructure bss.
+.It Cm mesh
+A mesh station in an MBSS network.
 .It Cm adhoc
 A station in an IBSS network.
 .It Cm ahdemo
@@ -115,8 +117,6 @@ interface that does not send beacon frames before
 interfaces may be created.
 .El
 .Pp
-More types are planned to support
-802.11s mesh nodes (station and ap).
 Note that an interface's type cannot be changed once it is created.
 .Pp
 .Nm
@@ -161,6 +161,12 @@ The module name of
 .Nm
 was used to be compatible with
 .Nx .
+.Pp
+Mesh stations follow the 802.11s Draft 3.0 specification which is
+not ratified and subject to change.
+Beware that this specification is incompatible with earlier drafts;
+and stations implementing earlier drafts (e.g. Linux)
+may not interoperate.
 .Sh SEE ALSO
 .Xr an 4 ,
 .Xr ath 4 ,