Evaluation of End-to-End Connection Recovery After Traffic Path Disruption in BATMAN Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks can be a valuable enhancement to network infrastructures in many contexts. Mesh nodes can extend the range of WiFi networks by acting as relays between source and destination nodes, which can be crucial for contexts where cabling is something to be avoided. Due to unforeseen degradations in the environment, however, certain links within the mesh may fail, leading to a lack of end-to-end connectivity, at which point the nodes must form new routes based on the employed protocol. Better Approach To Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking (BATMAN) is a very commonly employed mesh routing protocol that handles routing within mesh networks. This paper evaluates the end-to-end reconnection establishment performance of the protocol utilizing a hardware testbed, and discusses potential enhancements to improve reconnection latency. We also open source the software developed to automate our operations and measurements done on the testbed, for public reference and usage.