School mesh config

[John Watlington]

On May 15, 2008, at 5:51 PM, Bill Mccormick wrote:

> Ok.   I found 4 networking scenarios on the wiki at this link:     
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Networking_scenarios
>
> I was a little surprised not to see a scenario where a mesh network  
> connects via a mesh portal without a school server.   Is this a  
> valid scenario, or was it deliberately excluded for some reason?

It was overlooked.   The ability for an XO to act as an MPP while  
connected to the
Internet through a second interface has been ignored lately, leaving  
the school server
as our only MPP.  Given the behavior of our collaboration software  
when there isn't
a centralized presence service, this hasn't been a big loss.

> Did anybody explicitly define how the networking should handle  
> changes in configuration?
>
> An obvious one is from an p2p mesh to a school mesh.    I can see  
> how there could be troubles with a cluster of 1 or more XOs which  
> have an ephemeral connection to the school mesh - they would tend  
> to thrash between link local address assignment and DHCP address  
> assignment as the weak connection faded in and out.   I think the  
> same thing would happen with mDNS and the presence protocols.

Not really.   This is an area of concern.

> I'm really trying to get at the vision for how networking should  
> work.   I've seen some comments here and there that networking  
> should just work - but I'm looking for something at the next level  
> of detail.    I'm listening if anyone would like to share their  
> opinion.

I'm working on a proposal to send around, but more urgent
deadlines are interfering...

wad