Ad hoc Wireless Distribution Service (AWDS) is a layer 2 routing protocol to connect

mobile ad hoc network A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers in wired networks or access points ...

s, sometimes called

wireless mesh network A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a Telecommunications network, communications network made up of radio Node (networking), nodes organized in a Mesh networking, mesh Network topology, topology. It can also be a form of wireless ad hoc network.Chai ...

s. It is based on a

link-state routing protocol Link-state routing protocols are one of the two main classes of routing protocols used in packet switching networks for computer communications, the others being distance-vector routing protocols. Examples of link-state routing protocols include ...

, similar to OLSR.

Principle of operation

AWDS uses a

for organizing the network. In contrast to other implementations like OLSR it operates in layer 2. That means no

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

es must be assigned because the unique

MAC address A media access control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. This use is common in most IEEE 802 networking tec ...

es of the

WLAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...

hardware is used instead. Furthermore, all kinds of layer 3 protocols can be used, like IP, DHCP, IPv6, IPX, etc. The protocol daemon creates a virtual network interface, which can be used by the

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine lea ...

like a typical LAN interface.

Alternatives

The

list of ad hoc routing protocols An ad hoc routing protocol is a convention, or standard, that controls how nodes decide which way to route packets between computing devices in a mobile ad hoc network. In ad hoc networks, nodes are not familiar with the topology of their netwo ...

contains a large set of alternatives. However, most of them are academic and do not exist as practical implementations.

References

{{Reflist

External links

* An implementation for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

is available at https://web.archive.org/web/20070504155750/http://awds.berlios.de/
Analysis of Mesh Architectures
Why all mesh technologies are not created equal.

Review of three generation of mesh networking architectures.
Is Multi-radio mesh worthwhile?
Cost and performance considerations of multi-radio mesh. Wireless networking Ad hoc routing protocols