dose batman-adv support multi-gateway

hi
dose batman-adv support multi-gateway.
If there is a router which connets two mesh devices(gateway) through same layer 2 wired network, can the mesh network select a better gateway to the router for one packet.

2008-10-24

Hello 唐鼎,

Gateway things are not handled by batman-adv, this is a Layer 3 issue.

But lets assume you have a router/gateway C in the wired network of your 2 gateways A, B. Then there are two possible routes:

You -----(mesh)----> A ---> C
You -----(mesh)----> B ---> C

Only one of these routes is chosen, depending on which route looks better for the BATMAN algorithm in the moment of sending the packet. So it always uses only the best route, but not both (as you can see, it always chooses the "better gateway").

Using both routes simultaneously is an open research topic (look for buzz-/keywords like "multipath routing"), but we have no working implementation for this. In the best case its possible to gain more bandwidth, but this is only possible with multiple disjoint (interference-free) routes.

Don't hesitate to ask more if i couldn't answer your question.

regards,
Simon

[1] http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/labs/danss/sensor/adhoc/routing/lee_2001splitmultipath.pdf