mechanisms tied to mesh: "under a tree" collab

[Bert Freudenberg]

Am 17.09.2008 um 07:26 schrieb John Gilmore:

> The decision to tie application sharing to Mesh and Sugar was a bad
> design idea, one which I've been intending to explore fixing.

As Benjamin pointed out, the sharing is *not* tied to the mesh. It  
works just as well if both machines can receive broadcasts (for  
discovery) and make TCP connections (for actual collaboration). This  
works in a LAN or between two Qemu instances or even on the same  
machine running sugar-jhbuild twice (useful for debugging).

> My naive understanding was that zeroconf works, so you can run TCP/IP,
> but something about our non-mesh sharing protocol requires a "server"
> somewhere.  Otherwise what's that setting in "Network" in the Control
> Panel: "Mesh Server: olpc.collabora.co.um"?  Don't we switch between
> two different wire protocols (theoretically seamlessly), one of which
> requires a server?


Yes we do. I think that's just bad UI design - as far as I know the  
school server is independent of the mesh, so it should not be labeled  
"mesh".

The problem comes from the OLPC marketing that equates "mesh" with  
"collaboration" which in fact are two independent concepts. What the  
UI displays as "Mesh Server" should be "Collaboration Server" - it's  
only needed to mediate if the laptops who want to collaborate cannot  
talk to each other directly.

(and btw. you should *not* use olpc.collabora.co.uk anymore which has  
been switched to a new protocol so you won't see anyone while  
connected to that server)

- Bert -