Design and Evaluation of iMesh: An Infrastructure-Mode Wireless Mesh Network

Abstract

We have designed and evaluated iMesh, an infrastructure-mode 802.11-based mesh network. IEEE 802.11 access points double as routers making the network architecture completely transparent to mobile clients, who view the network as a conventional wireless LAN. Layer-2 handoffs between access points trigger routing activities inside the network, which can be thought of as layer-3 handoffs. We describe the design rationale and a testbed implementation of iMesh. We present results related to the handoff performance. The results demonstrate excellent handoff performance, the overall latency varying between 50-100 ms, depending on different layer-2 techniques, even when a five-hop long route update is needed. Various performance measurements also demonstrate the clear superiority of a flat routing scheme relative to a more traditional, Mobile IP-like scheme to handle layer-3 handoff.