Ad-hoc Networking

[Aaron Kaplan]

On Apr 24, 2008, at 2:26 AM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:

> Looking at trac, wireless is one of the biggest sources of bugs and  
> the
> community can hardly do anything about it. Normally, somebody who
> complains can be told to fix the code, but with a closed wireless
> firmware, complaining is the only possible action.



Folks, we can just repeat it once more:

there *are* open source layer 2 and layer 3 (Holger got that wrong,  
he said layer 4)
mesh software solutions out there.
So in case you can not use the marvell solution (which I am a big fan  
of, I would personally take that if available since it does not need  
CPU support), then there are many protocols out there to chose from.  
http://www.olsr.org being the most widely deployed and tested one.  
But there are also others. Depends on what you want or need.
All of these need some CPU cycles however. The advantage on the other  
hand is of course that it will run on any hardware / any laptop and  
most wireless cards. The best supported ones are those with broadcom  
chipset. The new atheros driver is also getting pretty good.

So: for energy conservation go with marvell 802.11s!
It is a wonderful job and I have the highest respect for Michailis.
Regardless of any chaos at 1CC.
If you can't have marvell 802.11s.. you still have many choices.
There even are very good protocols from the .mil sector out there.




For the people who love details:

And yes, the olsrd daemon was proven to scale. So you don't have to  
worry about that. Proof? wind.awmn.net/?page=nodes
And yes, wireless interference is a major problem for all devices  
operating in 802.11a/b/g freq. ranges. This is not the fault of any  
mesh protocol. The bands are just overcrowded. I propose that you  
look at 802.11a. Or new ranges. Lots of extra space there.


Who am I ? Why should you believe this mail?

I built up a city wide wireless mesh in Vienna with some folks here.  
http://www.funkfeuer.at/ . Holger is also close to the freifunk.net  
people (and I am too).


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