New, more realistic multi-hop network testbed

[John Watlington]

On Jun 7, 2008, at 2:31 AM, Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos wrote:

> 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.

And I didn't mean that OLPC isn't interested in making the mesh work.
The opposite is the truth.    But we HAVE to prioritize the testing  
being
done to the scenarios we are deploying into.

> 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.

Companies that aren't resource starved frequently fund different  
approaches.
Volunteers can make that possible even in resource starved companies.

>> 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.

What I am saying is that I don't believe a mesh testbed addresses
OLPC's customer's immediate needs.    A collaboration testbed does.

>> 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.

I read more than ten.   Ten laptops aren't worth the time already  
spent on
this thread.

I would like to point out that both Marvell and Nortel have mesh  
testbeds
(100 and 50 nodes, respectedly).    Our problem has been that no-one has
a collaboration testbed.

>>> 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.

Lack of resources and QA testing.
As Martin put it, we can't take Linus' approach of putting stuff
into our build and letting the customer test it.    If we put it in
our build, it should have been tested, tested, tested.

I'm sorry, but I've spent too much time in the last week being
told what doesn't work.   If the laptops can't communicate well
in a school, OLPC fails.

wad