01706nas a2200205   4500000000100000008004100001653001000042653000900052653001700061653000900078653003200087100001700119700001700136700002000153245007300173856005600246300000600302520117800308022001401486       2015                            d10aBabel10aBMX610amesh routing10aOSLR10awireless community networks1 aAxel Neumann1 aEster López1 aLeandro Navarro00aEvaluation of mesh routing protocols for wireless community networks  uhttp://people.ac.upc.edu/leandro/pubs/eomrpfwcn.pdf  a-3 aAbstract In recent years, we have witnessed the exponential growth of wireless community networks as a response to the clear necessity of Internet access for participation in society. For wireless mesh networks that can scale up to thousands of nodes, which are owned and managed in a decentralized way, it is imperative for their survival to provide the network with self-management mechanisms that reduce the requirements of human intervention and technological knowledge in the operation of a community network. In this paper, we focus on one important self-management mechanism, routing, and we study the scalability, performance, and stability of three proactive mesh routing protocols: BMX6, OLSR, and Babel. We study different metrics on an emulation framework and on the W-ILab.T testbed at iMinds, making the most of the two worlds. Emulation allows us to have more control over the topology and more systematically repeat the experiments, whereas a testbed provides a realistic wireless medium and more reliable measurements, especially in terms of interference and CPU consumption. Results show the relative merits, costs, and limitations of the three protocols.  a1389-1286