[Voyage-linux] Mesh Networking

[Keegan Quinn]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 03:21:13PM -0700, Andrew Niemantsverdriet wrote:
> Does anybody have a good link or two to learn about meshing with olsr?

Unfortunately, I never could find a good practical overview of using OLSR.
Maybe I can answer some of your questions, though.

> I want to learn about it and try it out with a test link but I can't
> figure out where to start. 
> 
> Some questions I have:
> 
> * Do all nodes need two radios or just one? 

I've only ever used OLSR with a single radio.  I suppose you could use two
if you wanted a node to route between 802.11a and 802.11g, for example -
a radio per band.

> * Can I have nodes that have a backhaul type link and have the other
> nodes choose that one as the best path

Assuming you mean best path to the Internet: you can have your 'backhaul'
node advertise an HNA route for that, or use the dyn_gw plugin to have the
routing daemon automatically advertise the default route if one is available.

> * What would my /etc/network/interfaces file look like

It will depend on your wireless hardware, but eg.:

iface wlan0 inet static
	address 192.168.0.1
	netmask 255.255.255.0
	network 192.168.0.0
	broadcast 192.168.0.255
	wireless_mode ad-hoc
	wireless_essid mesh
	wireless_channel 6

> * How big can it get

The base package is 324KiB on-disk installed, the plugins 209KiB.  In virtual
memory, my quiet little olsrd running on my notebook is using just a hair
under 2MiB.

> * Dose performance decrease the more hops you have? What is the limit on
> that?

I haven't had an opportunity to test with a significant multi-hop network,
so I can't provide any information here.

> * Do any packages exist for voyage?

I believe the backports I did for sarge should work on voyage:

deb http://cornerstone.personaltelco.net/debian ptp sarge

I'd be interested to hear the results.  Currently, these packages are
0.4.9, while the latest version is 0.4.10; I hope to have them updated
soon.

> * What is an example of a good topology layout

I'm not sure what you mean by this - could you elaborate?

HTH,

-- 
Keegan Quinn  <keegan at thebasement.org>
CEO, Producer
the basement productions
http://www.thebasement.org
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