In this invention we disclose methods for incorporating a security gateway within a wireless mesh network. In one embodiment, the wireless mesh network is a heterogeneous mesh network. In one embodiment, a gateway node, which is part of the wireless mesh network, requests a connection to the core network through a security gateway. The security gateway responds by creating an IPSec tunnel and a GRE tunnel within the IPSec tunnel from itself to the gateway node. Once the gateway node is communicatively coupled to the security gateway via secure tunneling, the gateway node sends a mesh routing protocol to the security gateway.