"Most other wireless routing protocol implementations (e.g. the batman daemon) operate on layer 3 which means they exchange routing information by sending UDP packets and bring their routing decision into effect by manipulating the kernel routing table. Batman-adv operates entirely on ISO/OSI Layer 2 - not only the routing information is transported using raw ethernet frames but also the data traffic is handled by batman-adv. It encapsulates and forwards all traffic until it reaches the destination, hence emulating a virtual network switch of all nodes participating. Therefore all nodes appear to be link local and are unaware of the network's topology as well as unaffected by any network changes. This design bears some interesting characteristics:"

• network-layer agnostic - you can run whatever you wish on top of batman-adv: IPv4, IPv6, DHCP, IPX ..
• nodes can participate in a mesh without having an IP
• easy integration of non-mesh (mobile) clients (no manual HNA fiddling required)
• roaming of non-mesh clients
• optimizing the data flow through the mesh (e.g. interface alternating, multicast, forward error correction, etc)
• running protocols relying on broadcast/multicast over the mesh and non-mesh clients (Windows neighborhood, mDNS, streaming, etc)