diff --git a/RELEASE_NOTES b/RELEASE_NOTES
index 209ff8d2a..952df65e4 100644
--- a/RELEASE_NOTES
+++ b/RELEASE_NOTES
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@ Bugs fixed
 - Bug 2535 - memory leak in bench-simulator.cc
 - Bug 2536 - fixed dead assignment and potential memory leak in wimax
 - Bug 2538 - fixed dead assignment on tap-bridge
+- Bug 2540 - fixed dead assignment on mesh/ie-dot11s-perr
 - Bug 2541 - preamble not assigned correctly
 - Bug 2542 - dead assignment on wifi mac-low
 - Bug 2545 - Optimized build fails for flow-monitor
diff --git a/src/mesh/model/dot11s/ie-dot11s-perr.cc b/src/mesh/model/dot11s/ie-dot11s-perr.cc
index 4a5525624..e6900fda3 100644
--- a/src/mesh/model/dot11s/ie-dot11s-perr.cc
+++ b/src/mesh/model/dot11s/ie-dot11s-perr.cc
@@ -70,8 +70,8 @@ IePerr::DeserializeInformationField (Buffer::Iterator start, uint8_t length)
   Buffer::Iterator i = start;
   i.Next (1); //TTL //Mode flags is not used now
   uint8_t numOfDest = i.ReadU8 ();
-  NS_ASSERT ((2 + 13 * numOfDest ) == length);
-  length = 0; //to avoid compiler warning in optimized builds
+  NS_ABORT_UNLESS ((2 + 13 * numOfDest ) == length);
+
   for (unsigned int j = 0; j < numOfDest; j++)
     {
       i.Next (1); // flags is not used now