Notes on Implementing a IEEE 802.11s Mesh Point

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are gaining wide popularity as a flexible and cost-effective alternative to the traditional set of disjointed IEEE 802.11 Access Points (APs). Their all-wireless infrastructure is in fact suitable for both residential premises and for hardly accessible places. As a consequence, many companies have already put on the market their own WMN solutions. Yet, though most of them are based on the common 802.11 MAC [1], these products are not interoperable. To harmonize this technology, IEEE set up the 802.11s working group (TGs) whose goal is defining a standard architecture for WMNs. Unfortunately, the drafting of the standard has turned out to be rather troublesome, many issues are still open, and proposals are being submitted to TGs in order to complete and improve the upcoming standard. So far the proposed solutions have been evaluated analytically or through simulations, but there is no experimental evidence of their goodness.