open 80211s on XO 1.5

[Martin Langhoff]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 8:50 PM, Ed McNierney <ed at laptop.org> wrote:
> Under a tree, using mesh networking is pointless (unless, I suppose,
> it is an extraordinarily large tree).  Mesh networking allows packet

You guys are both right. At the SF meetings, if you have a bunch of
XOs + an Active Antenna, you are using a combination of

 - 802.11s
 - Telepathy-based collaboration, using either Gabble (via ejabberd)
or Salut (without XS)

Now, in a small place, all machines can "hear" eachother's signals, so
while you are using 802.11s, you are not enjoying any of its benefits.

(And given what we know about 802.11s, you probably have less
bandwidth to use, just because you are using 802.11s. Or, to put it
another way, you'll have a saturated wifi with a small number of XOs,
where 802.11g can handle more XOs.)

Taking advantage of 802.11s not "hard", but it doesn't happen often.
You just have to have a few XOs far enough from the AA that they need
to do routing. It works. (Of course, it doesn't work if you've
saturated the spectrum.)

Our XO-1s using 8.2.1 never actually use ad hoc. The driver reports it
as such, but it's not ad hoc. Now, if you are all close enough, it's
almost the same as using ad hoc mode.




m
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