How many Border Routers for Wifi stability in a large Mesh Network?

[Jeremy Ellis]

Jonathan Hui can you make a stab at answering this?

This link talks about device limits. https://openthread.io/guides/thread-primer/node-roles-and-types#device_limits Basically 32 (FTD) router limit and 511 End Devices per router (That is a very large mesh, 16,352 devices ), as the number of devices moves up, how many linux or RPI  OpenThread Border Routers (OTBR) would be optimum? 

For Wifi redundancy I would want 3 OTBRs for any large mesh network as a minimum, wondering what would be a sensible maximum.  I am not sure if connecting 2 to 3 (FTD) Full Thread Devices as routers physically to the OTBR makes any sense. As far as I can tell no (FTD) router actually uses Wifi to connect to a border router, so all Wifi / Thread interaction works physically at the linux or RPI OTBR. 

(I guess the Particle Argon is an exception as it has separate Wifi and Thread antennas so theoretical an Argon could connect using Wifi to an OTBR)

Any comments Jonathan? Do most thread networks simply have one OTBR?

[Jonathan Hui]

It largely depends on what metrics you care about.

Clearly more than 1 border router is useful if you want redundancy.

If you want to reduce Thread channel utilization, then more border routers can help transfer traffic overhead from Thread to Wi-Fi/Ethernet.

Thread does impose a limit on the number of border routers. In Thread, border routers must register their information in Thread Network Data that is limited to 254 bytes. However, the maximum number of border routers the Thread Network Data can hold also depends on what other information is being carried in Thread Network Data.

--

Jonathan Hui

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "openthread-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to openthread-use...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/openthread-users/e073ec1a-9b2e-4a96-b563-7ea47f94fe78%40googlegroups.com.