What's open80211s?

open80211s is a reference implementation of the upcoming 802.11s standard on Linux. open80211s is based on the mac80211 wireless stack and should run on any of the wireless cards that mac80211 supports.

Mainline integration

We are happy to announce that open80211s has been accepted in mainline Linux kernel and is included in release 2.6.26. From now on the latest development code will be available in wireless-testing. It is also possible to use open80211s without having to recompile the whole kernel using compat-wireless.

We recommend the linux-wireless mailing list for patches or questions regarding the latest code, but we will keep an eye on the open80211 mailing list as well.

Documentation

This HOWTO describes what you can do with the current release of open80211s.

Driver Status

The following drivers are known to work in open80211s mesh point mode. This list tracks drivers in wireless-testing. For drivers where mesh point support is merged in mainline, the earliest kernel version is listed.

Driver Supported in Notes
ath5k 2.6.29 working, known issue in wireless-testing: need to scan before device will beacon
ath9k wireless-testing (broken)
b43 2.6.27 working
libertas_tf 2.6.27 working
p54 2.6.29 working
rt2x00 2.6.30 working (known issue: need to scan before device will beacon)
zd1211rw 2.6.26 (broken in wireless-testing) On some systems, mesh beaconing triggers what appears to be a firmware bug: details

Support for other mac80211 drivers is also possible. Please help test or fix them with patches against wireless-testing unless noted otherwise. Please refer to the mesh section of the mac80211 driver API notes for features that need to be implemented in order for a driver to support Mesh Point mode.

Contributing

Submit your patches via the linux-wireless mailing list.

Old Releases

Version One Line Description
Release 0.2.1 Airtime link metric and per-peer rate adaptation
Release 0.2.0 On-demand HWMP + broadcast by controlled flooding.
Release 0.1.2 Peer link management protocol.
Release 0.1.1 Mesh frame forwarding by means of manually populated path tables.