A flow-based network monitoring framework for wireless mesh networks

As an extension of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, wireless mesh networks recently were developed as a key solution to provide high-quality multimedia services and applications, such as voice, data, and video, over wireless personal area networks, wireless local area networks, and wireless metropolitan area networks. A WMN has a hybrid network infrastructure with a backbone and an access network and usually is operated in both ad hoc and infrastructure modes with self-configuration and self-organization capabilities. In this article, we review security challenges, attacks, and countermeasures in the physical, medium access control (MAC), and network layers of wireless mesh backbone and access networks. We then extend the concept of traffic flow from IP networks and define Meshflow in wireless mesh networks. Based on this new concept, we propose a comprehensive framework to realize network monitoring, user and router profiling, application and service balancing, and security protection in wireless mesh backbone networks. Practical issues and design trade-offs for implementing the proposed framework in real systems also are discussed.