NCS IPSP (Router role) support

[Smart.Enrg]

Hi,

Reading through IPSP posts on devZone I realize there's IPSP support in nRF5.

Wondering if there is IPSP (router role) support in NCS - for nRF52833 target?

[Vidar Berg]

Hi,

Support for ISPS is a bit limited unfortunately. The node role is supported in NCS with the Zephyr IPSP Sample, but for the router role you will need to set up a border router on a Linux host.

Have you considered other protocols such as Thread that support mesh networking, or is that not a requirement for this use case? Note that the Thread examples also come with multiprotocol support so that you can run BLE concurrently with thread.

Best regards,

Vidar

[Smart.Enrg]

Thanks Vidar,

Vidar Berg said:

The node role is supported in NCS with the Zephyr IPSP Sample, but for the router role you will need to set up a border router on a Linux host.

Do you mean in this case: IPSP node could be used to generate/ consume IP packets (acting as a NIC/ network interface) that any remote (BLE enabled) IP host can connect to?

Vidar Berg said:

Have you considered other protocols such as Thread that support mesh networking, or is that not a requirement for this use case? Note that the Thread examples also come with multiprotocol support so that you can run BLE concurrently with thread.

Yes, this is in fact a multiprotocol enabled Thread application. Trying to figure out - how to forward Thread traffic over BLE/ IPSP - so I could then use BLE host on the far side? say for cloud access.

[Vidar Berg]

Hi,

Thanks for the clarification. Did you already have a border router for the thread network? The Linux host can setup a network interface (bt0) with regular Bluetooth hci dongles or built-in BT HW. 

[Smart.Enrg]

Thanks Vidar,

Yes we've already tested bt0 setup.

About Bluetooth HCI, a side question - is it possible to use RPMsg? i.e. make nRF52 (multiprotocol enabled) act as Bluetooth HCI RPMsg peer?

[Vidar Berg]

Hi,

Sorry, but I don't understand how RPMsg fits into this. You can use SPI, UART, or USB to connect the nRF52 to the host.

Is the goal to have a multiprotocol dongle that exposes both the HCI (for BLE) and the spinel (for thread) interface?