[B.A.T.M.A.N.] batman-adv 2014.2.0 released

[B.A.T.M.A.N.] batman-adv 2014.2.0 released

[Marek Lindner]

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June 09, 2014. The B.A.T.M.A.N. team today releases batman-adv 2014.2.0 adding 
a new major component - multicast optimizations - along with a series of bug 
fixes. As the kernel module always depends on the Linux kernel it is compiled 
against, it does not make sense to provide binaries on our website. As usual, 
you will find the signed tarballs in our download section:

http://downloads.open-mesh.org/batman/releases/batman-adv-2014.2.0/

as well as prepackaged binaries in your distribution.


Thanks
------

Thanks to all people sending in patches:

 * Antonio Quartulli <antonio@meshcoding.com>
 * Fengguang Wu <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
 * Linus Lüssing <linus.luessing@web.de>
 * Marek Lindner <mareklindner@neomailbox.ch>
 * Martin Hundebøll <martin@hundeboll.net>
 * Simon Wunderlich <sw@simonwunderlich.de>
 * Sven Eckelmann <sven@narfation.org>


batman-adv
----------

This release brings the first piece of a more efficient, group aware multicast 
forwarding infrastructure in batman-adv. In the past, batman-adv had treated 
multicast traffic like ordinary broadcast traffic and simply forwarded each 
multicast packet to every node in the network. Aiming to reduce unnecessary 
packet transmissions in large networks, this initial improvement announces 
multicast listeners via the translation table mechanism, thereby signaling 
interest in certain multicast traffic. Based on this information, batman-adv 
can make the decision to either drop multicast traffic if no listener is 
present or forwarding the multicast traffic via unicast if a single listener 
signaled interest. Alternatively, multicast traffic is forwarded to the entire 
network as before.
For now, these optimizations only apply if all nodes in the mesh have no 
bridge interface on top their batX interface. However, extending these 
optimizations beyond the realm of non-bridged interfaces as well as optimizing 
setups with more than one listener are on the roadmap.

Numerous reference counter imbalances in the heavily lifted routing code 
causing all sorts of shutdown issues like system hang on reboot have been 
addressed. Another reference counter balance was hidden in the fragmentation 
v2 code sparking similar shutdown issues. A kernel crash on accessing an 
insufficiently protected pointer in the gateway code has been eliminated. In 
some situations retrieving the originator table would also lead to a kernel 
crash due to improper checking. Fast adding and deletion of VLAN interfaces on 
top of batX drove batman-adv into an internal translation table state 
mismatch. The resulting translation table exchanges with neighbors were bogus, 
thus creating inconsistencies on every node in the network. On changing the 
batX mac address batman-adv did not inform the translation table to also 
update the entries of all VLAN interfaces on top of batX. Stale mac address 
announcements were the consequence.
The code documentation (kernel doc) has been extended, accompanied by the 
customary code cleanups & Linux coding style adjustments. 


batctl
------

The newly added multicast optimizations can be enabled / disabled through 
batctl. Because the local and network-wide multicast mac address announcements 
are propagated via the translation table, batctl gained an option to filter 
multicast mac addresses and 'normal' client mac addresses upon translation 
table retrieval. 
The tcpdump component received a fix for the erroneously printed IP src / dst 
fields (a regression introduced with the IPv6 parsing support). The local 
translation table skip table header parameter was updated to correctly skip 
the lengthened table header. 


alfred
------

The detection and handling of once working but now broken network sockets has 
been improved. Alfred can easily encounter this situation if a local interface 
was recreated or a mac address changed e.g. due to manual assignment). The 
malfunctioning sockets are now closed and re-opened automatically.


Happy routing,
The B.A.T.M.A.N. team

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