Configurable Ethernet Mesh

[nomaster]

In Expert Mode, the user can switch the device's LAN ports mode to 'Mesh'. In this mode, the client bridge does not longer apply to them, but B.A.T.M.A.N. frames are exchanged over the ports. If the device has a vswitch, individual ports can be configured.

[lotarso]

maybe the user is able to choose which ports are in "mesh-mode" so for example he can setup port 1-2 as normal and 3-4 as mesh.

[neocturne]

Such a feature is planned for a future release. I'm unsure how much freedom we want to give the user here... should she be able to choose from a set of predefined configurations (maybe read from the site configuration), or do we want to make this completely configurable?

Most users would probably just use predefined configurations, I'm not sure though how such configurations could look when different numbers of ports should be supported (although I think all devices we support have 1 WAN port and 0, 1 or 4 LAN ports, so maybe it's enough to create configurations for these?)

For devices with just one ethernet port, it should be configurable to wan, client or mesh mode.

[lotarso]

i think "predefined configurations" are just fine.

[spookey]

As of now, there is an option to configure WAN-Interface to act as Batman Interface.

The Package for Web based Configuration is called gluon-luci-portconfig (add to your site.mk)

In the site.conf you need either mesh_on_wan = false or batman_on_wan = false to set the default value.
My question: which config option is correct? mesh_on_wan or batman_on_wan ?

[tcatm]

It's mesh_on_wan.

[spookey]

Thank you

[spookey]

I think mesh_on_wan is a great package!

But what made you choose the WAN Interface instead of one/all of the Switch Ports?

If I configure two Gluon Nodes to use Mesh_on_Wan, and connect them via cable, the only way to get connection to the outside World is via mesh over WiFi.

Second, using only one port allows only to directly connect two nodes.
I can imagine a lot of scenarios where one would want to distribute mesh via cable from a central point to different nodes, or at least daisy-chain them.

So please, if there is no serious reason not to use the Switch, consider doing so.

Also, to keep configuration more flexible it would be great to let the user assign interfaces, every setup is different..

[tcatm]

mesh-on-wan was straightforward to do so it was a great start. Allowing meshing on the LAN ports is a little bit more involved so we didn't add it to 2014.3 yet.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?

Also, to keep configuration more flexible it would be great to let the user assign interfaces, every setup is different..

[spookey]

Wonderful to hear, you are still on it. How may one help?

Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?

Sure.
Above it was asked if a predefined configuration would be enough or not.. I think not.
Using the mesh_on_lan option is always a special case, where we can't fully cover every setup with presets.
I thought of one checkbox per physical port, if ticked mesh is enabled on that port, if not, not. I consider this the most flexible way.

[tcatm]

We'd need to figure out how to do this (both from configmode and using the site.conf). Maybe writing a helper utility would be useful?

Tasks might include:

• enumerate ports
• assign port to VLAN (either client or mesh)
• reset everything to a sane default
• make it configurable from site.conf

Such a script should be written in either lua or C and most functionality should be put into a module so configmode can use it.

[tcatm]

I think this has been superseded by #284