Firetide, Inc.

Mohan Natarajan

Jorjeta Gueorguieva Jetcheva

Sachin Kanodia

Vinay Gupta

Ravi Prakash

Sivakumar Kailas

Murali Repakula

Kota Rathnamaiah Sharath Kumar

Pramod Jathavedan Akkarachittor

Jorgeta Jetcheva

Kota Rathnamaiah Kumar

Jorjeta Jetcheva

Channel assignment for wireless access networks is directed toward improved overall communication capability of the networks. A network is formed of wireless access points (APs) coupled via wired (and/or wireless) links and enabled to communicate with clients via radio channels of each of the APs. Local information is collected at each of the APs and processed to determine channel assignments according to a Neighbor Impact Metric (NIM) that accounts for one-hop and two-hop neighbors as well as neighbors not part of the network. Optionally, the NIM accounts for traffic load on the APs. The channel assignments are determined either on a centralized resource (such as a server or one of the APs) or via a distributed scheme across the APs. The local information includes how busy a channel is and local operating conditions such as error rate and interference levels.

Channel assignment for wireless access networks

Wireless mesh networks (or 'meshes') are enabled for arbitrary interconnection to each other and may provide varying levels of coverage and redundancy as desired. Interoperability between meshes having differing configurations, internal operations, or both, may be freely intermixed and inter-operated in unrestricted combination. Enhanced explicit inter-bridge control protocols operate using pre-existing control packets. Pre-existing broadcast packet floods are used to learn the best paths across interconnected meshes (termed a 'multi-mesh'). Enhanced routing protocols operating within each mesh may optionally examine information limited to the respective mesh when forwarding traffic, thus enabling robust multi-mesh scaling with respect to memory and processing time required by the routing protocols. Using assigned identifiers, forwarding loops are prevented, and optionally redundant broadcast flooding is prevented.

Techniques for enabling the efficient operation of arbitrarily interconnected mesh networks

Differentiated services are provided through service level agreements (SLAs) between access nodes and some of the clients using a wireless access network. Client devices include internal devices that are compliant with service-related specifications published by the access nodes. Client devices also may include non-compliant external and legacy devices, as well as outside interferers. The access nodes control target SLAs for each client device. The access nodes and the internal client devices perform rate limiting to ensure that a device's target SLA is adhered to. The service-related specifications include schedules to ensure preferential access for preferred internal client devices. The internal client devices send usage and bandwidth availability feedback to the access node they are associated with, enabling the access node to come up with better schedules for meeting the preferred internal devices' SLAs in view of the network conditions reported via the feedback.

Service differentiation and service level agreements for wireless access clients

Various embodiments implement a set of low overhead mechanisms to enable on-demand routing protocols. The on-demand protocols use route accumulation during discovery floods to discover when better paths have become available even if the paths that the protocols are currently using are not broken. In other words, the mechanisms (or 'Route Optimizations') enable improvements to routes even while functioning routes are available. The Route Optimization mechanisms enable nodes in the network that passively learn routing information to notify nodes that need to know of changes in the routing information when the changes are important. Learning routing information on up-to-date paths and determining nodes that would benefit from the information is performed, in some embodiments, without any explicit control packet exchange. One of the Route Optimization mechanisms includes communicating information describing an improved route from a node where the improved route diverges from a less nearly optimal route.

Route optimization for on-demand routing protocols for mesh networks

In a mesh network composed of multiple-radio nodes, we assign each radio to one of a plurality of channels, and treat a plurality of links between a pair of nodes as one logical link (bonded link). In some embodiments, the routing protocol is adapted to view each bonded link as one link having a combination of at least some of the properties of the constituent physical links. Traffic sent along a path is dynamically load balanced between the interfaces at each intermediate node based on the current utilization of each interface. In at least some embodiments, route discovery packets record the metrics of each component link of the bonded links leaving a node, but only one route discovery packet per pair of nodes is forwarded, reducing the route discovery packet traffic compared to if each route discovery packet were forwarded over each component link between the pair of nodes.

Bonding multiple radios in wireless multi-hop mesh networks

Techniques are described for automatically determining quasi-static per-link channel assignments for each radio in multiple-hop mesh networks having nodes with two or more radios and where only a small number of channels is available for use in the network. The method optimally assigns the channels to the radios of all of the nodes in the network so as to achieve the lowest interference among links and the highest possible bandwidth.

Multi-channel assignment method for multi-radio multi-hop wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (or 'meshes') are enabled for arbitrary interconnection to each other and may provide varying levels of coverage and redundancy as desired. Interoperability between meshes having differing configurations, internal operations, or both, may be freely intermixed and inter-operated in unrestricted combination. Enhanced explicit inter-bridge control protocols operate using pre-existing control packets. Pre-existing broadcast packet floods are used to learn the best paths across interconnected meshes (termed a 'multi-mesh'). Enhanced routing protocols operating within each mesh may optionally examine information limited to the respective mesh when forwarding traffic, thus enabling robust multi-mesh scaling with respect to memory and processing time required by the routing protocols. Communication scalability is improved by enabling frequency diversity across the multi-mesh by configuring meshes within interference range of each other for operation at a plurality of frequencies. Each mesh may operate at a respective non-interfering frequency.

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San Ramon, CA, United States of America

Mohan Natarajan