[WLANnews] Fwd: OLPC Laptop - some suggestions for the software

[thomasasta at gmx.net]

> > Hi David und Ivan.
> >
> > How does the wireless laptop get their IP-Adress?
> 
> See the Trac Ticket 19 [2]. IPv4 is able to do self-assignment (if
> needed) in the 169.254.x.x space. Ideally, you would use a cleaner
> solution, and it will likely be IPv6, which is able to do
> self-assignment of addresses [3]. Don't know if IPv6 will make it into
> the first production XO machine or not, though.

Ok, maybe then IPv6 is a solution for OLSR or B.A.T.M.A.N. as well, but it should be not a problem witht he normal existing IP adresses to get an auto-ip-signement, the chance, that one IP adress is done twice, should be rare and till now I thought it is depending on not having a developer interested in coding this.

> 
> > Why not a decentral auto-ip-signement and then a routing/hopping
> protocol from laptop antenna
> > to laptop antenna until the ISP Node is found?
> 
> Yes, this is what will be done, more or less. Please realize, that the
> engineers behind this project are, in fact, quite good at what they
> do.

Internet is essential for the laptops, and as in afika is no cable, we need a wireless mesh. we already mentioned Batman or meshnode.net, which is able to autosign iP adresses, but closed source.

As this is the main question, if meshing is working to provide internet acess in Afrika and if it is open source or not... my vision of the laptop is, that all should be open. I would drop the webcam and get 1000 MB flash hard disk, as well one USB stick-slot, but not an MMC/SD-Card-Reader. there are USB-MMC/SD adapters for one euro.. 
Furthermore electricity is a problem of course, but we need energy in each house and each school, so.. we should switch to an 600-750 MHZ AMD Processor. Then Firefox, Thunderbird, Songbird, Open Office and Cspace and Classic SF.net-Mediaplayer can be distributed on that machine.
It make no sense to have a laptop without OOO and Firefox.

Of course I understand, that the first generation is already done and produced, but better change this and get a workable PC .
Drop the cam, drop the coloured display, switch the wording from 100-Dollar-Laptop to an 100-Euro-Laptop (which is 20 % more money) and justify it with an engeneering or production center in europe.

I can buy here a loptop with 1700 MHZ with 40 GB  HD & wifi but without CD-Rom for 499 Euro!! This is fully equipped and if you replace windows, then you get the hardware for 299 Euro. So... it should not so difficult to reduce the costs more. Even if it is 150 Euro..  Firefox and OOO and CSpace and Thunderbird are all ready.. so .. dunno why so much software engineering has to be done.

The main difficult thing is the meshing firmware. Here we need more testing with marvells Closed source or Batman / OLSR or Meshnode..
So please keep the cooperation to them and send them each 3 laptops with marvell chip for testing BATAMAN please...


> > OLSR or the follow up B.A.T.M.A.N. is quite good for that,
> > and: there is as well the option to add auto-ip-signment to Batman.
> 
> Which I am sure is true, but irrelevant. As the hardware/software
> debate that just happens shows, no general-purpose routing daemon,
> superhero-named or otherwise, is appropriate or capable of running on
> the specialized networking hardware the OLPC requires. Although
> testing projects to see how BATMAN compares to the binary blob are
> welcome. Competition is a good thing.

*plonk*

> 
> > Third, next to Batman and Meshnode, there is the new wireless WIMAX,
> which will provide DSL over air wireless in a distance of 50 km.
> 
> Yes. And as I understand most wireless marketing, that is a big 'under
> optimal conditions with the wind to your back' scenario. The
> fundamental shift away from 802.11b/g/s isn't something that is
> reasonable to consider before the first production round is sent out
> in June(?). After that, we can always reevaluate our assumptions.
> 
> > No, the mesh routing is software. It's software which runs on the ARM
> > CPU in the wireless chip rather than on the host CPU, but it's software
> > nonetheless.
> >
> > A proper open-source version of that firmware would be very nice.
> 
> No doubt. [5]
> 
> [1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Instant_messaging_challenges
> [2] http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/19
> [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipv6#Stateless_autoconfiguration_of_hosts
> [4] http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2006-December/003296.html
> [5] http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/46
> 
> -- 
> Michael Burns * Security Student
> NET * Oregon State University
> 
> 
> Yes, competition is a good thing.
> 
> Krishna Sankar (Cisco) says 802.11s is like a Ad-Hoc On-Demand 
> Distance-Vector (AODV) or Dynamic MANET On-Demand Routing (DYMO) net.
> http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/networking/2006-September/000029.html
> Here http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~cjw/ (Publications: “Performance Comparison
> of AODV and OFLSR in Wireless Mesh Networks”) can you find a *pure* 
> *theoretical* comparison between the different approaches.
> The comparison is not really valid because B.A.T.M.A.N. is the successor 
> of OLSR and has many advantages. (much smaller, less CPU)
> 
> The BIG difference between them is that 802.11s has never extensive tested
> in *real* *live*
> 
> So get B.A.T.M.A.N. https://www.open-mesh.net/ and check it for yourself.
> Almost no dependencies, make, run.
> Btw. the implementation on MAC-layer suitable to integrate in the 
> Mavell-Chip firmware is on the way. https://dev.open-mesh.net/batman
> 
> 
> >> yes, a proper open-source version of that marvell-firmware would be very nice.
> 
> I read that Marcelo Tosatti is now working on a proper open-source version
> of the B.A.T.M.A.N. firmware. Is that correct ?
> 
> 
> cheers
>   Andi
> 
> Not really,
> 
>  But there is some people working in that see 
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/46
> 
> Eliminate dependency on licensed code in Marvell firmware.
> 
> We are using a Marvell Wireless chip; it has an ARM 9 processor and
> something like 96K of RAM. 
> 
> Marvell licensed a proprietary microkernel as a framework for developing
> their firmware for the chip. 
> 
> Since Marvell does not own this code, it is not theirs to give away,
> though much/most of the code now in the firmware is not encumbered. A suitably
> motivated person could take the OLPC code and retarget it for some other
> small embedded operating system (e.g. TinyOS, maybe), and then the firmware
> could itself be open source. 
> 
> This would be very nice indeed, but OLPC itself does not have the
> resources to put into this. If someone volunteers, we can make the code available
> for porting to a free system.
> 

Where to download ? 

> Requires documentation/cooperation from Marvell about the internal
> workings of the chip. 
> 
> Are they willing to go that route?
> 

Of course not, so bring Atheros into the frame, and more RAM and ROM or Flashdrive.

> Hi, Marcelo! 
> 
> Actually, we'll have no problem getting started under NDA. Once that's in
> place for the core developers, we'd then move to an alternate O.S., and we
> could then be truly Open Source. 
> 
> Cheers! MarkF mbletsas at laptop.org
> 

Marc, are you from Marvell? Why not starting to be open source and collaborating with BATMAN ?


> P.S. This should actually be assigned to mbletsas at laptop.org, 
> 
> 
> Rafael Ortiz says: 
> 
> Is there any posibility to use a different chip with O.S Firmware in the
> future...? 
> 
> The Marvell chip has very specific features that are essential to us --
> stores its routing table in RAM, can forward packets through the mesh at low
> power while the main CPU is off, etc. We could only consider using a
> replacement if one existed with these features.
> -- 

I think Atheros is working on such a thing? Why not giving more HD-Flash and more Ram ?

Furthermore, we need a distribution of this laptop over Amazon.com and UPS,
so everyone can buy it, we then need to add the overhead of handling pauschal to the price, just double it, but everyone must be ablet to buy is at one central online store, ebay or amazon.

thanks for further discussions, a) using main applications like firefox and OOO as well as having an open source meshing firmware with auto-ip-signment.

Tom


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