Mesh support very likely to miss Sugar 0.84

[Peter Robinson]

Hi All,

I've never used the mesh before so I'm not 100% on how it works...

>> In Sugar 0.84, will mesh at least be disabled, from the point of view
>> of Ohm and the kernel, so that the WiFi chip can be powered down when
>> it's not in use for WiFi?
>
> To me, one of the most attractive points about the OLPC is the
> capability to use it collaboratively "far from civilization".  This
> capability is customarily described as "two kids under a tree".

I'm not sure completely sure about deployments but how much are they
actually used? "Two kids under a tree" don't technically need a mesh
to collaborate (as cool as it sounds).

> The language in the above quote implies that 'mesh' is disposable.
> With help from this list, I've been successful in using a (manually
> initiated) mesh between XOs running Joyride 2633.  PLEASE do not
> take away my ability to do this !!

I'm not sure about mesh as such but I wonder how much the mesh is
actually used in large deployments (I believe in at least one large
deployment the network function was essentially nor used)or
deployments generally but on the other side of things Fedora 10 and
the associated NetworkMager 0.7 on which the non kernel side of OLPC
networking is based supports also by default the sharing of wifi. If
there's issues with mesh would is be possible to add a "sharte my
network" checkbox which automagically uses the network sharing options
included in NM 0.7 to allow "Two kids under a tree" to collaborate
without the mesh (unless they're both looking over the shoulders of
each other anyway :-)

> My own long-term proposal for powering down the radio chip is to
> have *two* checkboxes in Control Panel -> Network -- one for 'Mesh'
> and one for 'Wifi'.  The user who wanted to power down the chip
> would uncheck both.

My thoughts would be to have this a whole lot automated as why
would/should some random "kid" care about what "wifi" and "mesh" mean.
Surely it would be better to have almost a learning style system (In
the last 10 times I'm been powered up I've never seen a mesh network
so I'll power down the mesh until the next time I reboot/powerup and
will rescan. If I don;t find one then I'll just turn off. Rescan on
restart and then turn off. If a mesh is there don't power off and join
in".

Peter