Salut/avahi/meshview issues

[Giannis Galanis]

I understand that salut is not very popular lately since we are drifting
mostly towards infra mode.
Still, it is the preferable way for G1G1 laptops to talk to each other,
since there is no SS, and the public jabber is not guaranteed, or in the
future overcrowded.

I have conducted several tests with a group of 9 XOs blinded with each
other.
The most important issues is the response of the mesh view, when an XO
leaves the mesh.

The results were:

1.  The xmas tree effect is still here.
i.e. XOs occasionally vanish/reappear in differenent positions.
This is because of the following:
When the avahi cache includes several inactive/departed/(reported as failed)
peers,
and a new pear arrives,
then all the inactive peers vanish from the screen instantly. (#5501)
If their inactivity was temporary, then they will reappear shortly in a
different location
If for e.g. 3-4 XOs are (by user internention) moved simultaneously from ch6
to ch11, and then back to ch6, the icons wont have the time to disappear.
BUT, the first to return to ch6 will cause the effect/bug to the others,
which will instantly vanish. Shortly after they will naturally all return
1by1 to ch6 and will reappear in different locations.
There was a patch for this issue(5501), which was included in 678+, but it
has no effect.

2. It takes up to 10min for avahi even to detect the inactivity of a peer.
i.e. If an XOs switches channels, for up to 10min avahi wont even know(it
used to be 1-2min).

3. It will take a total of about 30min for the XO to vanish from the mesh
view(this is tooo long!)

4. Avahi/mesh view respond independently.
The situation used to be that when an entry dissappeared in avahi, it
disappeared in mesh view, and the same when new peers arrive.
This relation was very consistent.
However, now we have the following cases:
a) an XO will vanish from the mesh view, but remain "indefinitely" in the
avahi cache as "failed to resolve"
b) sometimes avahi shows alot less peers than the mesh view. The extra peers
in the mesh view are definitely active since they properly respond to
activity joining/sharing.
c)sometimes avahi included more active peers than the mesh view.
does anyone know why this is happening?
Is it a bug?
I have logs, if needed, that compare avahi-browse with timestamped
dbus-monitor logs, that indicate the inconsistencies.

5. An important improvement is that peers will not generally fail alot on
their own.
So, if many XOs join a mesh channel, and noone goes away, the will not start
failing. This used to be a common effect after 4-5 XOs. However, i noticed
once in 1cc, 61 active XOs in the mesh view! This shows that salut is more
capable then we expected.
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