New, more realistic multi-hop network testbed

[Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos]

C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> Last I checked, Poly wasn't an employee of OLPC.  
I don't think this is a valid argument either:

Not being an employee of OLPC does not mean I 'm willing to waste my 
time on something OLPC has no interest in. Like most other volunteers, 
work at OLPC is interesting because it's technically challenging and 
globally significant. If the work is not in OLPC's radar of interest, 
then something's wrong and it should be discussed.

Being an employee of OLPC does not mean your technical solution is 
better than mine either (me being a volunteer). Please don't take this 
personally or literally. Having such a large pool of volunteers means 
you may have to assess your software stack more often against what 
volunteers can offer you.

> I don't think we can or should make him fix our dense network problems, or run our mesh
> testbed. 

Heh, I think I actually offered a solution on the first and volunteered 
for the second, but was put off until OLPC figures out what how to 
proceed with the mesh testbed.

> We should, however, give him all the support he needs (and
> he's only asking for ~10 laptops) to create the sparse network testbed
> he's interested in, since we will need that after 8.2, and if it's to
> be ready then someone needs to start working on it now.
>
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> Yes, continued wireless testing is important.  We also need to be
> willing to act on the results of that testing.
>   

I must admit that it is rather hard for OLPC to act on such results. It 
may be for lack of resources, but I'm speaking for myself when I say 
that OLPC has a hard time trusting developers unless they're on its 
payroll, especially for core parts of its software (with the exception 
of Marco? ;-). I think commitment, communication and roadmaps is the 
answer to this problem.

p.



-- 
Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos
Graduate student
Viral Communications
MIT Media Lab
Tel: +1 (617) 459-6058
http://www.mit.edu/~ypod/