Closely Related Standards
802.11s inherently depends on one of 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g or 802.11n carrying the actual traffic. One or more routing protocols suitable to the actual network physical topology are required. 802.11s requires Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol, or HWMP, be supported as a default. However, other mesh, ad hoc or dynamically link-state routed (OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N.) may be supported or even static routing (WDS, OSPF). See the more detailed description below comparing these routing protocols.
A mesh often consists of many small nodes. When mobile users or heavy loads are concerned, there will often be a handoff from one base station to another, and not only from 802.11 but from other (GSM, Bluetooth, PCS and other cordless phone) networks. Accordingly IEEE 802.21, which specifies this handoff between nodes both obeying 802.11s and otherwise, may be required. This is especially likely if a longer-range lower-bandwidth service is deployed to minimize mesh dead zones, e.g. GSM routing based on OpenBTS.
Mesh networking often involves network access by previously unknown parties, especially when a transient visitor population is being served. Thus the accompanying IEEE 802.11u standard will be required by most mesh networks to authenticate these users without pre-registration or any prior offline communication. Pre-standard captive portal approaches are also common. See the more detailed description below of mesh security.
Read more about this topic: IEEE 802.11s
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