Heterogeneous mesh router with virtualized network adapters on IXP425

We have designed a heterogeneous mesh router for wireless mesh networks (WMNs), using a network processor. WMN is a multi-hop wireless network, comprising two kinds of nodes - mesh routers and mesh clients. One of the primary concerns in such networks is that of routing in a heterogeneous setup. Microsoft Research has developed a mesh connectivity layer (MCL) for computers that use Windows operating systems. In MCL, routing is done using a protocol called link quality source routing (LQSR), which is an adaptation of the dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol. LQSR is optimized for mesh scenarios. LQSR has been shown to perform better than the traditional routing protocols. We have implemented an efficient method to increase the performance of the overall network by enhancing LQSR with routing based on packet size and realizing it on network processors (IXP425). The network processors with their inherent support for network processing tasks help in realizing this task efficiently. Also, in this design, the network processors act as gateways, connecting heterogeneous networks and have virtualized adapters in order to connect to multiple networks using a single Network Interface Card.