(usagi-users 04092) Linux kernel support for mesh network multicast routing

Hello,

I'm Henning Rogge, one of the programmers of the OLSR.org routing daemon.
OLSR is a proactive mesh net protocoll and our implementation is used mos=
tly=20
on small routers or embedded hardware.

At the moment OLSR.org does only support unicast routing (by setting rout=
es in=20
the linux kernel to do the hop-by-hop forwarding), but we would like to a=
dd=20
the ability to use multicast too. OLSR is a proactive routing protocol, s=
o=20
each routing daemon has information about the whole network topology.

Most mesh networks use wireless links, so we don't have well defined broa=
dcast=20
interfaces and often have to retransmit incoming packages back through th=
e=20
same interface.

Does the linux kernel support setting up multicast forwarding rules like =
this=20
so we could create multicast trees by the routing daemon and let the kern=
el=20
forward the packages (and drop duplicates) ?

(I send this message twice to the list because the first one was GPG sign=
ed=20
and did not appear in the archive)

Henning Rogge

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Diplom-Informatiker Henning Rogge
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Tel.: 0049 (0)228 9435-961
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