Get it at : http://huchra.bufferbloat.net/~cero1/3.3/3.3.8-10
This will be the last release of cerowrt for a while. I think this is even stabler than 3.3.8-6 was, but we'll (you'll) see. I will be traveling for most of the next month and unable to do much bloat-related stuff. Everything I deeply care about has been pushed into openwrt, anyway. Cerowrt-3.3.8-10 is stable but forward-looking. It has an outline towards what a more wifi-bloat-free future would look like. Maybe. While the code remains experimental (as always) I did spend the last 2 weeks doing a test deployment of 12 (3800, pico 2HP, nano-m5) radios at a campground, with what is basically in 3.3.8-10. Uptimes are good. Performance is excellent. Latency is remarkably low.... Did I mention you can get it from : http://huchra.bufferbloat.net/~cero1/3.3/3.3.8-10 But: First up are the minuses in this release - ntp keeps getting restarted due to badly parsing ntpc (#113 strikes again) I keep being annoyed by this and then getting intimidated by #113 again and failing. - simple_qos still isn't done, and is ever less simple Despite much fiddling with various models, with ECN dropping, with buffering, etc, nothing I would consider worthy of replacing the openwrt QoS system got done. Certain things are good in simple_qos - ipv6 and diffserv support - others are not (gui, flexibility, actual performance) - dlna - upnpd Neither compiled out of the box and I lacked time or tools that use these to look at them. I had multiple requests for them but I didn't know they were borked to start with. Apologies to the requestors. - ECN dropping - after several high level conversations with many people smarter than me, I decided that dropping ECN packets at a certain point made sense. So did everyone else. The "certain point" remains puzzling to all, and rather than continue to waste time on it in cero I decided to play with models instead, and frankly, hope that someone else comes up with some sane way to combine ECN and codel sojourn time. I note that as a side effect of worrying about ECN (and the cause of much controversy on the babel list), I arbitrarily marked babel packets as CS6+ECN, as one means of exploring explosive but non-dropping behavior in fq_codel + ECN. Now, on to the plusses in Cerowrt-3.3.8-10 + fresh openwrt merge + gpsd 3.7 + switch to quagga (thx denis and Juliusz) + babelm available as an option - smoother convergence algo from julius + diffserv support (mostly to classify "ants" into the VI queue) (me) + hw queue length patches from Felix Feitkau (now in openwrt mainline) Re: openwrt merge - openwrt still hasn't frozen but it looks close Re: gpsd - I hope to finally work on the cosmic background bufferbloat detector some, now that I have some geography to play with. Re: Quagga Most of my own excitement this past month has been in seeing quagga become a routing platform that was not only usable for babel (with authentication!) but also to interoperate with other protocols like ra, bgp, ospf, etc. I am delighted to finally make the switch to quagga-babeld as cerowrt's default routing daemon. An ipv6 default routing bug may remain in this... Re: babelm - Features a new, smoother converging babel algorithm. Work on the original babel continues, but this algo arrived too late and in the wrong source-base to play with much. It's in ceropackages and should build for any version of openwrt. Re: diffserv work Unlike current Linux wifi, cerowrt wifi obeys the most rational set of rules for things like EF, CS6, CS7 and ant-like packets I could come up with. Basically everything except EF got moved out of the VO queue, and many other markings ended up in the VI queue... Re: hw queue reduction Probably the most interesting of all these changes is the ath9k hardware qlen support, which gives us a knob to play with deep in the ath9k wireless driver to control it's native buffering. It defaults to 128 buffers per hardware queue. I cut that down to 2 for VO, and 3 for VI, BE, BK. These are front-ended by fq_codel running at mildly higher than it's default 5ms target. I get remarkably low latency results at all (even marginal) transmit rates, at the expense of a LOT of raw bandwidth in more lab-like conditions. I'm in the process of running real-life benchmarks out of the Yurtlab. I'm not prepared to publish what I've collected thus far, hopefully by IETF I'll have something pulled together. I am very interested in seeing how fq_codel reacts to sudden bandwith changes in wifi outside of the lab and simulations. I would encourage those doing their own benchmarks to PLEASE do them at reasonable distances under difficult (NOT LAB!) conditions, and I also note things like youtube streaming are good indicators of actual usability. However: the original pre-3.3.8-10 behavior can be restored by editing /usr/sbin/debloat and changing the qlen_whatever variables to 128, from their current 2,3,3,3. We are painfully aware of how hard it will be to get good aggregation AND low latency back into wireless-n, and have begun to document a way forward here: http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/Fq_Codel_on_Wireless Anyway: Install cerowrt-3.3.8-10 and enjoy. PS: I will be traveling extensively over the next 60 days. In Paris July 15-27, then Vancouver, then Seattle, aug 3-5, Linux plumbers aug 28-31, NJ sept 7-12. Perhaps I will see some of you in one of those places? PPS: Multiple people have thought I was kidding when I said I was living in a yurt. I'm not kidding. http://snapon.lab.bufferbloat.net/~d/lupin/yurtlab.jpg It's not just a yurt, it's a regular high-tech hut of baba yaga! It's pleasantly located midway between Santa Cruz and San Jose, and I have 110 acres of mostly-wifi-free space to play in. And it's got a 24/7 pool, with the most advanced wifi on the planet now run to it. It's an inexpensive place to call a temporary home, better than a shipping container by far. In August I mostly plan to do more analysis, and develop more tests and benchmarks, utilizing the acreage and radios I've emplaced here (and having a bit of fun), and to continue attempting to fix the ongoing funding issues, than further develop cerowrt. That's the plan, as I write, anyway. -- Dave Täht http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki - "3.3.8-6 is out with fq_codel!" _______________________________________________ Cerowrt-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
