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In large Wi‑Fi systems, broadcast traffic can take up large amounts of airtime1. Partitioning a Wi‑Fi system into multiple subnets breaks handover while solutions like broadcast suppression break user functionality.

WiMoVE is a scalable Wi‑Fi System that partitions stations into overlay L2 domains to limit the amount of wireless L2 broadcast traffic. Overlay L2 domains "follow" the stations, being resized on demand, thus preserving handover.

WiMoVE is built with standard network protocols, on top of open‑source technology:

  • The overlay networks use BGP EVPN with VXLAN encapsulation.
  • All BGP speakers run FRRouting to exchange EVPN routes.
  • The access points run OpenWrt with a custom, open‑source daemon called wimoved.

This solution allows for using commodity access points running OpenWrt for large‑scale Wi‑Fi deployments, even from different vendors.

A high-level explanation of the project can be seen in this presentation (German).

Where to go from here

Architecture Overview Design Document Setup

About

WiMoVE is a bachelor's project at Hasso‑Plattner‑Institute at the chair for Internet Technologies and Softwarization.

The project was carried out by Aaron Schlitt, Alexander Sohn, Lina Wilske and Richard Wohlbold under the supervision of Holger Karl in partnership with BISDN GmbH.

  1. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8y-r9JBhmw for a talk on this issue. ↩