Turris and Wi-Fi EasyMesh

I learned recently that Wi-Fi Alliance announced Wi-Fi EasyMesh certification program. It should allow to create a mesh network using a hardware from different manufacturers.
https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-easymesh

This raised few questions:

  • Are there any plans to make Turris routers (Turris 1.x, Omnia, MOX) Wi-Fi EasyMesh compliant?
  • Can my Turris possibly join a mesh network with other Wi-Fi EasyMesh compliant devices?

Anybody knows the answers?

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Setting up a wireless connection to other access points is done via simple clicking in luci webinterface. That way you are absolutely independent from vendors.
In my opinion it’s not necessary for the wireless clients to be able to roam as they are fixedly installed and you arrange antennas to perfectly point to their respective access point (you’re even able to build rocket stable connections using discrete directional antennas).
Setups like that are clearly superior to mesh routers with build-in antennas…

I am not sure that is correct. In such setup (aka repeater) the WLAN bandwidth suffers a severe bandwidth penalty. Having said that I do not know however whether there is a similar penalty on the bandwidth in a MESH scenario.

That is what EasyMesh aims for

removes the need to stay within a single-vendor ecosystem

Too bad that there has been no response from the developers.

To my humble understanding EasyMesh™ utilizes IEEE 1905 and unless I am mistaken such has not been implemented as of yet in either OpenWRT or TO.

Adoption rate of EasyMesh™ amongst router/ap vendors appears slow, most likely for commercial reasons (their bottom line) but perhaps also performance claims, whether true or not.

Not necessarily unless the other device utilizes IEEE 802.11s Question about the Turris Omnia: Does it support 802.11s? - General discussion - Turris forum or in case Turris products would be EasyMesh™ certified.

Whilst EasyMesh™ utilizing IEEE 1905 as an abstraction layer (OSI model layer 2.5) to exchange Control Message Data Unit (CMDU) with 1905 neighbours those CMDUs are communicated directly over Layer 2, which could be IEEE 802.11s or proprietary vendor solutions.

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Any news on the development of EasyMesh?
There seems to be prplMesh for OpenWRT: prplMesh - prpl Foundation
But I don’t know where to start, just that I have a EasyMesh compatible router that I’d like to use as AP. :slight_smile:

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I think the place to start would be to request that prpl Foundation packages be compiled for Omnia. Any chance we could get that @cynerd? (I feel you would know if that’s realistic or not.)
Thanks!

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Theoretically, it should be just about the inclusion of feed (PRPL Mesh packages feed (#312) · Issues · Turris / Turris OS / Turris Build · GitLab). At the same time, it has to be tested first before we include it in distribution.

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