Cross-layer mDNS/ARP integration for IEEE 802.11s Wireless mesh Network

Popularization of mobile computing devices created a need for robust, efficient and ubiquitous methods of communication and network access. At the same time, evolution and standardization of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies made them an attractive solution for building of complex network systems. Moreover, growing maturity of WLAN standards such as IEEE 802.11 allows for introduction of WLAN architectures other than a classic point-to-multipoint structure. An interesting example of such architectures is described in IEEE 802.11s mesh extension to the popular WiFi standards family. It is a very comprehensive proposition, likely to provide advantages in both infrastructure access and ad-hoc setups. However, due to distinctive characteristics of wireless mesh networks, many network services designed to function in classic, cable-based Local Area Networks will perform inefficiently in such an environment. The paper presents a proposition of a cross-layer procedure integrating Multicast DNS name discovery, ARP address resolution and IEEE 802.11s mesh path discovery, which offers significant advantages compared to a standard deployment of these services in IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh environment.