MeshMon: a multi-tiered framework for wireless mesh network monitoring

Monitoring and troubleshooting a large wireless mesh network (WMN) presents several challenges. Diagnosis of problems related to wireless access in these networks requires a comprehensive set of metrics and network monitoring data. Collection and offloading of a large amount of data are infeasible in a bandwidth constrained mesh network. Additionally, the processing required to analyze data from the entire network restricts the scalability of the system and impacts the ability to perform real‐time fault diagnosis. To this end, we propose MeshMon, a network monitoring framework that includes a multi‐tiered method of data collection. MeshMon, dynamically controls the granularity of data collection based on observed events in the network, thereby achieving significant bandwidth savings and enabling real‐time automated management. Our evaluation of MeshMon on a real testbed shows that we can diagnose a majority (87%) of network faults with a 66% savings in bandwidth required for network monitoring. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. We present MeshMon, a network monitoring framework that includes a multi‐tiered method of data collection. MeshMon dynamically controls the granularity of data collection based on observed events in the network, thereby achieving significant bandwidth savings and enabling real‐time automated management. Our evaluation of MeshMon on a real testbed shows that we can diagnose a majority (87%) of network faults with a 66% savings in bandwidth required for network monitoring.