New, more realistic multi-hop network testbed

[Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos]

Hi Wad,

John Watlington wrote:
>
> Poly,
>     In theory, your suggestion sounds good.   In practice, I think
> it is advanced research winning out over fixing real problems.

Heh as you know, research is usually done based on simulations, not by 
deploying such cumbersome, large area networks ;-)

>
>     In the spirit of testing realistic scenarios where we are currently
> deployed and failing, I would instead strongly urge concentrating
> on testing 70 laptops in a small space (no larger than 1CC's devel
> area) with two WiFi access points.

I thought I covered this scenario quite thoroughly; cerebro enabled 
about 70 laptops to chat in a simple mesh, even without using an access 
point or a school server. I got no useful comments, nor was there any 
significant interest to plan for sugar integration, so I think it's time 
to move forward with a different test.

>
> This may not help the mesh routing work immediately, but it would
> help us verify why teachers in Uruguay are complaining about an
> inability to connect.

I was not presented with any specific scenarios from Uruguay to test 
with cerebro, which I would be very willing to test. Again, I insist on 
continuing to develop cerebro instead of testing the regular XO's 
collaboration stack because the performance of the former is at least an 
order of magnitude better.

>
> It would also allow testing of realistic methods of automatically
> becoming an MPP.  As Michail has rightfully pointed out and
> Uruguay and Peru have been requesting, we need a way
> of extending the WiFi network in the school out to the village.

This is exactly one of the goals of this test - extend the network 
outside the classroom, into the village.

>
> I don't see us getting far enough along with changes to mesh   
> routing, 

There never was any intent on changing mesh routing.

> or replacing parts of salut with cerebro in time for the
> 8.2 release.  

I believe there is no comparison between salut and cerebro (please 
correct me if I'm wrong). As for the 8.2 release, I was never asked for 
an integration plan. We will never make it into any release, unless we 
start planning.

> But I do believe that Michail can figure out a decent
> way to gate the MPP functionality by then.
>
> The 8.2 release is the one that Peru will be using next year (2009).
> It is very important that any MPP functionality that is added back
> to the build be very well tested in the dense school wifi scenario
> by 8.2 freeze to ensure happy customers.

I don't really see how this relates to the proposed test. MPP is not, 
currently, the objective.

p.