Thinking about redundancy...if I add a second mesh gateway on the mesh, is there a way to cost that default route higher than the first mesh gateway? And is there a way from the command line to turn the default route off? My thought there is to write a simple shell script to ensure that the node really has internet access before advertising the route.
KQ9DW,
there's a new option in the beta release in basic setup under the LAN settings, "Disable Default Route". Consequently, the policy routing tables will take over and route to a gateway on the mesh (should one exist). There's not a quick setting in AREDN to over-ride the routing (based on link costs) to advertised mesh gateway(s) should one exist. This is something to consider in a future release to package up the olsr 'smart gateway' capability--which allows a user to directly choose their default gateway instead of relying on the hop by hop decisions on the way to the gateway with lowest link cost.
Joe AE6XE
thanks Joe, good info.
The above is inaccurate regarding the disable default route feature in beta.
The "disable default route" function prevents the mesh node from advertising a route to 0.0.0.0/0 (everything such as global internet) to the lan port (allowing say a a laptop connected to the mesh Lan port and a WIFI network to access the mesh but still use the Internet from WIFI. Should you still route traffic to the node (such as a forced route) the mesh node will continue to route it.
The rest regarding policy routing is correct that the nodes will choose to go to the gateway that is "Path" closest, which in most cases is likely what you want for most connections (short of long lived sessions that have issues with IP changes) to keep the RF as clean as possible, the smart gateway code can possibly help with the issue of NAT change over but still going for the closest is often the best to as one extra hop can mean a significant difference in performance.