[Battlemesh] BSS load element patch

[Paul Fuxjaeger]

On 05.08.15 14:57, Bastian Bittorf wrote:

> Does e.g. a client gets informed about a congested network

Exactly.
It allows nearby clients/nodes to make MUCH better decisions. [1]

> or in other words: does it solve a problem?

###
Essentially, very small local channel utilization measurement reports
are broadcasted to all direct neighbors by piggybacking them onto
IEEE802.11 beacons. [2]
###

1) Maintainers could better distinguish causes of link problems [3]
2) Our current algorithms for rate control, routing and
network-selection could make better decisions if they have access this
"remote channel load" statistic.

So, we think this feature could be really helpful. It increases the
networks capability to self-regulate, for a small price. [4]


-paul

PS: Arthur did all the hard work, I'm just doing the cheap talking.






[1] that is probably the reason for recent AP models in the enterprise
segment already broadcasting it.

[2] channel utilization measured at the receive antenna port of the
device that is sending that beacon.

[3] if LTE-U/LAA/muLTEfire becomes widespread :( we need a way to detect
that such a nearby non-IEEE80211 source is blocking the channel.

[4] Currently, OpenWRT sends around 200bytes PSDUs per beacon (depending
on mode etc). Assuming a 100ms beacon interval and 1Mbit/s, adding
these 7 bytes to them would increase the channel utilization each
beaconing node is generating by less than 0.06% of total airtime.