Re: [IAEP] Mesh Dreams = OLSR

2010-09-03 Thread Reuben K. Caron
Mike,

Thank you for the information!

To be clear, from what I understand from our discussions in the past  
you're topology looks like

AP(802.11A + OLSRD) - AP (802.11B/G) - XO

You have several AP(802.11A + OLSRD) acting as your backbone and they  
drop down to standard AP (802.11B/G) for connection to the XOs.

Please let me know if this is correct.

Out of curiosity: have you considered extending your OLSR network to  
the AP (802.11B/G)'s and installing the OLRSd binary on your XOs so  
the OLSR network can be extended beyond the school?

Thanks,

Reuben

On Sep 2, 2010, at 6:36 PM, Mike Dawson wrote:

 Hi,

 Sorry for my late reply to this.  Actually we use OLSR in Afghanistan
 to do our school networking like so:

 1. An OLSR router (running openwrt Freifunk ; see freifunk.net )
 connects to the other routers in the school - that forms the backbone
 on one network (e.g. channel 6)

 2. A vanilla OpenWRT router actually connects to the XOs in the class.
 We reduce the transmit power on that and run it on a different
 channel (e.g. 1 or 11)

 The plus side is that you get a pure wireless system that does not
 need network cabling / does not have cables getting killed by the
 environment.  The down side is you use more routers.  I think
 financially the costs are pretty similar.  Also you can now use
 802.11n to get good speeds on the backbone.

 Seems to scale pretty nicely - we have 500 XOs in most schools.  Note
 though by design we are not using the collaboration on the school
 server but rather just through the AP - teachers are not that enthused
 by the prospect of kids being able to chat with anyone anytime.

 This has practically made doing the deployment in the field a bit
 easier - though the firmware is not always perfect and not always
 working out of the box with all hardware options.

 Regards,

 -Mike



 On 25/08/2010, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Reuben K. Caron  
 reu...@laptop.org wrote:
 Where Mesh != 802.11s but rather an adhoc, self healing, self
 organizing routable network.

 Cerebro gave a great working demo of what you describe. Don't know  
 how
 they compare.

 I think it is perfectly feasible to achieve what you want...

 - to do it seamlessly and with polish will take a ton of work

 - very few users will actually benefit because the under a tree
 scenario covers IMHO most of our interesting use cases.

 People do talk about having a mesh that covers their whole town, and
 it's great dream but not achievable with our current constraints

 - town-wide meshes are made of stationary nodes

 - the mesh approaches we're discussing burn CPU / battery...

 - perennially power-starved users will focus on use, not on
 maintaining the communal mesh up

 Imagine a world where Sugar on a Stick machines can communicate on  
 the
 same network as an XO laptop

 We have that now with ad-hoc and infra. Limited but we have it.

 A world where mesh capabilities are
 hardware agnostic allowing anyone to bring up a mesh network by
 booting a live cd.

 Mesh is pixie dust for most people. Your 'imagine' lines will make  
 the
 imagine things that cannot be made to work _in the way people
 imagine_. Some meshy things can be made to work in a lab. Others just
 involve tradeoffs no sane user would take on...

 We've had bazillion threads about this, because mesh stokes passion.
 Problem is... even if you had the magical code right now working
 seamlessly... the cost/benefit ratio isn't good.

 cheers,



 m
 --
  martin.langh...@gmail.com
  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
  - ask interesting questions
  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: [IAEP] Mesh Dreams = OLSR

2010-09-03 Thread Mike Dawson
Hi Reuben,

It's AP(802.11N + OLSRD)  AP(802.11B/G) - XO - that's it as it is...

Actually considered putting up routers outside the school to try and
form a cloud that would then link back to the school / library.
Haven't yet considered putting that on the XOs - we would need to put
some logic on them like if I'm connected / or see the network school
function as normal if not then run OLSRd.  Then we could put routers
w/panels up lamp posts, trees, etc.

Would be nice to do - actually have had reports of quite large mesh
accomplishments being done relatively densely with OLSR because it
keeps it's own table of routes in the normal memory.  Unfortunately at
the moment we would lack the development manpower to actually put that
into practice.  In theory would just be putting a script of some kind
in the if-up section.

Regards,

-Mike


On 03/09/2010, Reuben K. Caron reu...@laptop.org wrote:
 Mike,

 Thank you for the information!

 To be clear, from what I understand from our discussions in the past
 you're topology looks like

 AP(802.11A + OLSRD) - AP (802.11B/G) - XO

 You have several AP(802.11A + OLSRD) acting as your backbone and they
 drop down to standard AP (802.11B/G) for connection to the XOs.

 Please let me know if this is correct.

 Out of curiosity: have you considered extending your OLSR network to
 the AP (802.11B/G)'s and installing the OLRSd binary on your XOs so
 the OLSR network can be extended beyond the school?

 Thanks,

 Reuben

 On Sep 2, 2010, at 6:36 PM, Mike Dawson wrote:

 Hi,

 Sorry for my late reply to this.  Actually we use OLSR in Afghanistan
 to do our school networking like so:

 1. An OLSR router (running openwrt Freifunk ; see freifunk.net )
 connects to the other routers in the school - that forms the backbone
 on one network (e.g. channel 6)

 2. A vanilla OpenWRT router actually connects to the XOs in the class.
 We reduce the transmit power on that and run it on a different
 channel (e.g. 1 or 11)

 The plus side is that you get a pure wireless system that does not
 need network cabling / does not have cables getting killed by the
 environment.  The down side is you use more routers.  I think
 financially the costs are pretty similar.  Also you can now use
 802.11n to get good speeds on the backbone.

 Seems to scale pretty nicely - we have 500 XOs in most schools.  Note
 though by design we are not using the collaboration on the school
 server but rather just through the AP - teachers are not that enthused
 by the prospect of kids being able to chat with anyone anytime.

 This has practically made doing the deployment in the field a bit
 easier - though the firmware is not always perfect and not always
 working out of the box with all hardware options.

 Regards,

 -Mike



 On 25/08/2010, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Reuben K. Caron
 reu...@laptop.org wrote:
 Where Mesh != 802.11s but rather an adhoc, self healing, self
 organizing routable network.

 Cerebro gave a great working demo of what you describe. Don't know
 how
 they compare.

 I think it is perfectly feasible to achieve what you want...

 - to do it seamlessly and with polish will take a ton of work

 - very few users will actually benefit because the under a tree
 scenario covers IMHO most of our interesting use cases.

 People do talk about having a mesh that covers their whole town, and
 it's great dream but not achievable with our current constraints

 - town-wide meshes are made of stationary nodes

 - the mesh approaches we're discussing burn CPU / battery...

 - perennially power-starved users will focus on use, not on
 maintaining the communal mesh up

 Imagine a world where Sugar on a Stick machines can communicate on
 the
 same network as an XO laptop

 We have that now with ad-hoc and infra. Limited but we have it.

 A world where mesh capabilities are
 hardware agnostic allowing anyone to bring up a mesh network by
 booting a live cd.

 Mesh is pixie dust for most people. Your 'imagine' lines will make
 the
 imagine things that cannot be made to work _in the way people
 imagine_. Some meshy things can be made to work in a lab. Others just
 involve tradeoffs no sane user would take on...

 We've had bazillion threads about this, because mesh stokes passion.
 Problem is... even if you had the magical code right now working
 seamlessly... the cost/benefit ratio isn't good.

 cheers,



 m
 --
  martin.langh...@gmail.com
  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
  - ask interesting questions
  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel



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Re: [IAEP] Mesh Dreams = OLSR

2010-09-03 Thread C. Scott Ananian
I'm not 100% certain we've pulled in members of the OLSR mailing lists
on this thread yet.

But they've actually got a number of very impressive *real world*
demonstrations of OLSRd in the wild.  You'll have to search the devel@
archives for 'olsr' to find the emails I sent years ago with all the
details.

Granted, I don't know that they've demonstrated the software scaling
out to distributed notes *and* in to 100 laptops in a single room w/o
any manual tweaking.  They can best tell you about that themselves.

But OLSR is a much more appropriate and much less pixie dust
solution than 802.11s ever was/is/will be.

I think the primary challenge is social -- isn't it always?  The OLSRd
guys have to get passionate about making their stuff work on XOs, and
enough deployments have to be adventuresome (and desperate) enough to
give them a testbed to iron out all the kinks.

But I think it's a worthwhile management challenge for someone to
attempt.  Because what's needed is leadership, managing the resources,
linking person A to person B, driving it to release/ship, and a little
bit of inspiring the troops.  The technical challenges are much less
hard.

(And it's probably an outside OLPC project, at least initially,
because OLPC can't afford to devote any resources to it.)
  --scott

ps. technical challenges: making it bulletproof and brainless,
seamless scalability from lots of laptops in a tight space to a few
laptops spread out, and (eventually) processor-independent operation
on the marvel microcontroller to allow sustaining the mesh at very low
power levels.
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Re: [IAEP] Mesh Dreams = OLSR

2010-09-02 Thread Mike Dawson
Hi,

Sorry for my late reply to this.  Actually we use OLSR in Afghanistan
to do our school networking like so:

1. An OLSR router (running openwrt Freifunk ; see freifunk.net )
connects to the other routers in the school - that forms the backbone
on one network (e.g. channel 6)

2. A vanilla OpenWRT router actually connects to the XOs in the class.
 We reduce the transmit power on that and run it on a different
channel (e.g. 1 or 11)

The plus side is that you get a pure wireless system that does not
need network cabling / does not have cables getting killed by the
environment.  The down side is you use more routers.  I think
financially the costs are pretty similar.  Also you can now use
802.11n to get good speeds on the backbone.

Seems to scale pretty nicely - we have 500 XOs in most schools.  Note
though by design we are not using the collaboration on the school
server but rather just through the AP - teachers are not that enthused
by the prospect of kids being able to chat with anyone anytime.

This has practically made doing the deployment in the field a bit
easier - though the firmware is not always perfect and not always
working out of the box with all hardware options.

Regards,

-Mike



On 25/08/2010, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Reuben K. Caron reu...@laptop.org wrote:
 Where Mesh != 802.11s but rather an adhoc, self healing, self
 organizing routable network.

 Cerebro gave a great working demo of what you describe. Don't know how
 they compare.

 I think it is perfectly feasible to achieve what you want...

  - to do it seamlessly and with polish will take a ton of work

  - very few users will actually benefit because the under a tree
 scenario covers IMHO most of our interesting use cases.

 People do talk about having a mesh that covers their whole town, and
 it's great dream but not achievable with our current constraints

  - town-wide meshes are made of stationary nodes

  - the mesh approaches we're discussing burn CPU / battery...

  - perennially power-starved users will focus on use, not on
 maintaining the communal mesh up

 Imagine a world where Sugar on a Stick machines can communicate on the
 same network as an XO laptop

 We have that now with ad-hoc and infra. Limited but we have it.

 A world where mesh capabilities are
 hardware agnostic allowing anyone to bring up a mesh network by
 booting a live cd.

 Mesh is pixie dust for most people. Your 'imagine' lines will make the
 imagine things that cannot be made to work _in the way people
 imagine_. Some meshy things can be made to work in a lab. Others just
 involve tradeoffs no sane user would take on...

 We've had bazillion threads about this, because mesh stokes passion.
 Problem is... even if you had the magical code right now working
 seamlessly... the cost/benefit ratio isn't good.

 cheers,



 m
 --
  martin.langh...@gmail.com
  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
  - ask interesting questions
  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

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Re: [IAEP] Mesh Dreams = OLSR

2010-08-25 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Reuben K. Caron reu...@laptop.org wrote:
 Where Mesh != 802.11s but rather an adhoc, self healing, self
 organizing routable network.

Cerebro gave a great working demo of what you describe. Don't know how
they compare.

I think it is perfectly feasible to achieve what you want...

 - to do it seamlessly and with polish will take a ton of work

 - very few users will actually benefit because the under a tree
scenario covers IMHO most of our interesting use cases.

People do talk about having a mesh that covers their whole town, and
it's great dream but not achievable with our current constraints

 - town-wide meshes are made of stationary nodes

 - the mesh approaches we're discussing burn CPU / battery...

 - perennially power-starved users will focus on use, not on
maintaining the communal mesh up

 Imagine a world where Sugar on a Stick machines can communicate on the
 same network as an XO laptop

We have that now with ad-hoc and infra. Limited but we have it.

 A world where mesh capabilities are
 hardware agnostic allowing anyone to bring up a mesh network by
 booting a live cd.

Mesh is pixie dust for most people. Your 'imagine' lines will make the
imagine things that cannot be made to work _in the way people
imagine_. Some meshy things can be made to work in a lab. Others just
involve tradeoffs no sane user would take on...

We've had bazillion threads about this, because mesh stokes passion.
Problem is... even if you had the magical code right now working
seamlessly... the cost/benefit ratio isn't good.

cheers,



m
-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: [IAEP] Mesh Dreams = OLSR

2010-08-24 Thread Andrés Ambrois
On Tuesday, August 24, 2010 11:26:23 am Chris Ball wrote:
 Hi Reuben,
 
 Consider the benefits of using open source software versus our
 closed source firmware and partnering with communities like
 Freifunk whose network is ~ 800 node, guifi.net is almost 10k
 nodes in Barcelona, Athens Wireless is 5k nodes.
 
 The fact that a custom mesh algorithm would have to run on the CPU --
 prohibiting any kind of idle-suspend -- makes it a non-starter for an
 XO deployment in my eyes.  Did you have any thoughts on this?

We (MontevideoLibre, a free wireless community network) have been using OLSR 
for a while now. And though the topology in a typical OLPC scenario is very 
different, we've talked about assembling an image running OLSRd for a while. 

Anyway, I dont have time for a full response to this thread right now, but I 
had a conversation with smithbone and silbe a while back that may be 
illustrative of the worse-case scenario in terms of power consumption:

aasilbe: I think a working PoC could gather a lot interest from 
deployments...
silbe aa: one thing to consider is the power draw. with libertas_tf, the 
host CPU needs to be powered on. 
aayes
aasilbe: do you have an idea of what that means in actual numbers?
aaperhaps smithbone has a guesstimate 
silbe aa: counter-question: are you thinking of running the protocol while 
the XO is powered off (screen off, everything in suspend with wake-on-WLAN) 
or just during regular operation?
silbe for the latter case, it might not make much of a difference, 
especially if automatic power management (automatic suspend) is disabled.
smithbone Running the system is going to cost you in the 5W range. 
silbe in the powered off case it's going to make a huge difference. I 
don't think it'll be able to run for more than 3h while there's any traffic.
aasilbe: one of the things I want to find out is the convergence time of 
the different options
silbe aa: i.e. the time until the network/mesh is stable?
aayes
silbe aa: if you were in europe, you might try getting funding from the EU 
for that ;)
aasilbe: also, BATMAN has a layer 2 kernel module, maybe we could make 
it aware of the PM state?
silbe they seem to pay some pretty sums for mesh research
 * aa migrates to Europe
aa:P
silbe aa: it should just integrate into the kernel PM QoS framework I 
cuppose, see Documentation/power/pm_qos_interface.txt
aasilbe: will do
silbe aa: oh, and some recent mail from me has a link to nice slides 
explaining the PM QoS framework
aasilbe, smithbone: do you guys know if wol would work with libertas_tf?
aasilbe: to sugar-devel?
silbe aa: no idea, sorry.
silbe aa: I think to de...@l.l.o
aasilbe: found it, thanks!
smithbone aa: which gen?
aasmithbone: XO-1
smithbone aa: on XO-1 the wakeup is generated by strobing a signal to the 
EC. So libertas_tf would need to support strobing that signal
aasmithbone: thanks a lot, is this documented somewhere?
aatoo bad the firmware is closed :(   
smithbone aa: no. because none of the systems you are talking about have 
open documentation
aasmithbone: I understand 
smithbone aa: But I can certainly tell someone what gpio on the wlan module 
to strobe and for how long.

-- 
  -Andrés


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