[Commotion-announce] Creating an Ad Hoc WiFi MESH Network

[Paltasingh, S.]

Dear Josh,

Thank you so much for the valuable information. I went through the links given by you.

My master's thesis project is: Secure Commissioning (Forming/Joining) In Ad Hoc WiFi MESH networks. 

I read the documentation of commotion and this is what my understanding is:
1. Commotion software platform supports formation of Ad Hoc WiFi MESH network but confined to only routers.
2. In other words Commotion software platform  enables formation of Ad Hoc WiFi MESH network of routers.
3. Laptops (phones, tablets) will behave as legacy WiFi nodes and will connect to one of the commotion routers (in a star topology) which is having MESH connection with other commotion routers. The actual MESH is formed between the routers running the commotion software.

Is my understanding correct as per the documentation provided by commotion wireless project ??

If Yes, then is there any MESH security challenges that needs to be incorporated at the time of joining of a new router (running commotion firmware) to the existing MESH network. I can work on those security challenges and contribute to the commotion community as my master's thesis work is also related to finding solutions to those kind of security challenges.

Looking forward to your valuable comments and suggestions.

Thanks and Regards,
Sritam Paltasingh.
________________________________________
From: Josh King [jking at chambana.net]
Sent: 13 March 2017 14:48
To: Paltasingh, S.; commotion-announce at lists.chambana.net
Subject: Re: [Commotion-announce] Creating an Ad Hoc WiFi MESH Network

Hi Sritam,

Commotion currently exists primarily as a firmware distribution for routers, and cannot be installed
on laptops. The project is currently on hiatus while I complete a rewrite of many of its core
components. Some of these components could potentially be used for an implementation that would
allow mesh networking between laptops, but that's currently not one of my short term goals.

You probably want to look into manually setting up mesh routing and addressing between your laptops.
If they have compatible wifi cards and run Linux, your best bet may be using either batman-adv or
802.11s, as they have native support built into the Linux wireless stack. I have not followed it
myself, but here is a tutorial from the open80211s project on setting up an 802.11s mesh between
supported devices:

https://github.com/o11s/open80211s/wiki/HOWTO

Good luck!

On Mon, 2017-03-13 at 09:22 +0000, Paltasingh, S. wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I want to connect 5 laptops in a closed room in an Ad Hoc fashion by creating a MESH network in
> between them.
>
> I do not want to connect the laptops in an infrastructure mode. I want to create a MESH network in
> which the laptops are the nodes (routers) of the network.
>
> The laptops will use their WiFi interface to create/connect and communicate in the network without
> depending on any pre-existing infrastructure like the router, internet.
>
> In the formed Ad Hoc MESH network the laptops should be able to communicate/share data among each
> other.
> Can this be achieved using the commotion software platform.
>
> If Yes, then please help me on how to do it using the commotion software platform on my laptops.
>
> Looking forward to your help.
>
> Thanks and Regards,
> Sritam Paltasingh.
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Josh King
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