interfaces-batman - B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. extensions for the interfaces(5) file format

Maximilian Wilhelm <max@sdn.clinic> 2025-03-25 interfaces-batman(5)

batman-ifaceslistofinterfaces Specifies the underlay interfaces (hardifs) which should be configured for the B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. meshif defined within the iface stanza. batman-hop-penaltyhop-penalty The hop-penalty defines the cost of traversing a node or an interface. The hop-penalty is a numeric value between 0 and 255. Historically a hop-penalty could only be set on a meshif, since B.A.T.M.A.N adv. v2020.3 (included in Kernel 5.8) it can also be set on a per-interfaces (hardif) basis. batman-gw-modegw-mode Denotes the gateway mode which controls the role this node will play within this B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. instance. The mode can be off, client, or server. batman-distributed-arp-tablemode Activates or deactivates the Distributed ARP table (DAT) within this B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. instance. Valid values are enable and disable. batman-multicast-modemode Activates or deactivates the multicast mode of this B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. instance. Valid values are enable and disable.

Better Approach To Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking (B.A.T.M.A.N.) advanced is a mesh protocol which provides an Ethernet overlay network over an Ethernet underlay. The overlay interface is called meshif whereas underlay interfaces are called hardif. It's supported in the Linux kernel and thus available in many Linux environments. The ifupdown-ng exectuor relies on the batctl tool being installed. Support for setting interface based hop-penalties required Linux Kernel 5.8 or later. B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. adds 30-60 bytes of encapsulation overhead depending on wether netword coding is activated or not. This should be taken into consideration when setting up overlay networks, particularly on underlay networks with a conventional 1500 byte MTU. See https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki for more details and updates. The following options allow to set up B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. interfaces.

A B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. meshif: auto bat-pad-cty iface bat-pad-cty batman-ifaces dummy-pad-cty vlan1234 batman-hop-penalty 5 # hwaddress f2:00:c1:01:00:00 mtu 1500 A B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. member interfaces (hardif): auto vlan1234 iface vlan1234 mtu 1560 batman-hop-penalty 10

interfaces-batman - B.A.T.M.A.N. adv. extensions for the interfaces(5) file format

batctl(8)