[Voyage-linux] Mesh Networking

[Andrew Niemantsverdriet]

On Wed, 2006-01-25 at 17:48 -0800, Keegan Quinn wrote:
> 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.
> 
Thanks for the reply Keegan, see some comments/questions inline:
<snip>
> > * 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.
> 

HNA routing is part of the olsr program correct?

<snip>

> > * 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.
> 
I am sorry that question should read how many people can the mesh
contain. It seems to me that there would be a real practical limit to
the amount of clients that could be apart of the mesh. 

> > * 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.

Still want an answer to this one if anybody else has one.

> > * What is an example of a good topology layout
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by this - could you elaborate?
> 
This kind of ties into the backhaul question above. After reading your
email I think a hybrid network layout would be best (please correct me
if I am wrong). If you have a central point to distribute internet from
you link to that from as many places as you can. Then you use the mesh
type network to fill in the dead spots. 

> HTH,

Thanks, that helped out very much!

 _
/-\ ndrew