Optimized link state routing protocol

The Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) is a protocol to connect mobile ad-hoc networks, also sometimes called wireless mesh networks. It is a Link-state routing protocol. It collects data about which network members can communicate, and then calculates an optimized routing table.

The advantage of this approach is that connections are made quickly. The disadvantage is that the communication to discover network members occurs continuously. Also, calculation and memory burdens are continuing, and may be too heavy for small computers. The program is fairly large and complex.

OLSR is one of several solutions to this problem. Another is AODV, a distance vector routing protocol solving the same problem. Distance vector routing is simpler, requires less memory and calculation, but requires more delay, and when a route is needed, communication is much heavier. Another is Dynamic Source Routing, which substantially optmizes the network traffic. For other alternatives see the Ad hoc protocol list.

External link

• http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3626.txt Request for Comments on OLSR- the specification
• http://www.olsr.org/- downloadable code for OLSR on GNU/linux, with a great deal of documentation, including a very informative survey of related work.
• http://hipercom.inria.fr/olsr/