Border routers and other multi-radio devices (was: Development status for SAM XR21)

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Hi Adam,

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So while both are likely possible they’re not recommended. I should know better. My brain gets going and occasionally forgets about the whole constrained device aspect. I suppose it would make more sense in both cases to use something that looked more like the Linux based IoT-A8 device (though, I’d probably go with the NDA free Freescale iMX6) with a few radios and wired Ethernet and/or wifi.

Then again… I suppose with Hauke’s recent ENC18j60 work it might make even more sense to use how ever many cheap single band 430 devices plugged into an Ethernet switch. Hmmm… I wonder if enough power could be siphoned off a non-POE switch to power a small micro like a 430 and a 15.4 radio.

Anyways. You make good points about routing overhead and buffers. Routing should be left to the big 110/220 Linux boxes with their endless supply of RAM.

Thanks for the quick reply.

–adam

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Hi Martine,

Hi Adam,

2014-11-11 22:43 GMT+01:00 Adam Hunt <voxadam@gmail.com>:

This reminds me… I was wondering, would it be possible to host more than one wireless interface on a theoretical RIOT border router? I was thinking about the possibility of a single boarder router with both 2.4 GHz and sub-GHz radios on it.

Theoretically yes, but keep in mind that this increases the size of the greatest fiend in the embedded Internet: the buffers :wink:

Another thing I was thinking was a wireless coordinator (no wired ethernet, wifi, or what have you) with multiple radios in the various bands to allow communication between devices in different portions of the spectrum. This would allow for a network that physically looks contiguous instead of having to have two disparate wireless networks that are required to communicate via a border router or maybe even a classic Linux/BSD router.

That would be a border router nevertheless (just between two LoWPANs*). So yes, though it is not described in any standard I know, this scenario might be possible. At least in theory… But even than I would propably prefer to connect multiple boards over an Ethernet switch, just to keep the routing overhead low ;-).

I’m not sure I get your point here. More interfaces, more overhead, right. But what’s the fundamental difference between an additional wireless If and and additional ethernet If in terms of routing state?

Best,

Emmanuel

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Hi Emmanuel