mechanisms tied to mesh: "under a tree" collab

[Ricardo Carrano]

John,

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 9:46 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
> [I posted bug #8524 re lease activation not working on AP's.]
>
> Another mechanism that only works on Mesh is sharing "under a tree".
>
> It's perfectly feasible for four or five kids with laptops, all
> sitting under a tree, to share over ad-hoc 802.11 mode.  They don't
> need a mesh that forwards packets; they can all hear each other on the
> radio just fine.  Mac laptops do this, for example, using the standard
> Zeroconf protocols to assign IP addresses to themselves, and find each
> other by name with mdns.
>
> OLPC's collaboration infrastructure doesn't support this -- or if some
> underlying layer does, there's no UI for it.  There's no way for the
> user to tell the laptop, "Talk to other nearby laptops -- without the
> mesh, without an access point".
>
> Future hardware might well want to discard the complicated and
> power-hungry mesh option, since we really aren't using it anyway,
> except for lease activation and this "under a tree" scenario.  That
> would give us lots more choices on future WiFi hardware.  If we fix
> collab to work in ad-hoc mode under a tree, and when two or more
> machines are plugged-together via Ethernet without a server, then not
> only will our future products have that choice, but also, our collab
> stuff will be MUCH easier to drop into ordinary Linux distros and
> applications.
>
> It seems to me that this would achieve a big piece of OLPC's original
> software goals -- to spawn a revolution in free software applications
> that support and encourage online collaboration.  (Divorcing the
> collab support from the OLPC-unique Sugar GUI is also a prerequisite
> for making that happen.)
>
>        John
>
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It's true that multi hoping comes with extra complexity. But it is
also true that you can achieve much more with multi hoping than with a
802.11 IBSS. If we really want to encourage freedom and empower
people, a multihop wirless network is the only foreseeable
communication technology that frees people from the dependency of
infra-structure (meaning entities that run that infra and associated
costs) and is usable not only under a tree, but in a larger context
and coverage area.

There are technical challenges in the way, but OLPC should keep
pushing this for the benefits it will bring. It seems a perfect fit
with the Mission.

Also, please note that the scenario you describe: 5 kids under the
tree, works for some time now with XOs.

Cheers!
Ricardo