NHDP and OLSRv2 for community networks

The OLSR.org implementation of OLSRv1 (olsrd) is one of the most widely deployed open source mesh routing daemons. The extensive use of olsrd in community networks provided valuable insights leading to the design of OLSRv2 and the development of the OLSR.org network framework (OONF). In this paper, we describe this evolutionary process and our OLSRv2 implementation based on OONF which also supports embedded platforms. In addition, we present some enhanced features unique to our implementation. These features include means to increase the self-configuration capabilities also in mixed setups of IPv4-only, IPv6-only and dual-stack configurations. The implementation process and the protocol evaluation have been supported by the Virtual Confine Testbed, extended by a Rician fading model. This allows for bug identification in the code and for a first but realistic performance comparison between OLSRv1 and OLSRv2 for wireless links. These results will also allow for targeted extensions of OLSRv2 for a better trade-off between the new flexibility of the type-length-value-based packet format RFC5444 and the efficiency of a binary format like the one OLSRv1 uses.