[Bloat] getting started with mesh networking

[Bloat] getting started with mesh networking

[Andrew Hammond]

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I have been trying to follow the directions at

http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/Mesh

however they assume a lot of prior knowledge. I'd like to set up mesh
networking where I simply add routers to extend the mesh. I have my primary
/ uplink router configured and working. I have enabled AHCP on it and
applied the changes to /etc/config/network as described (except I left
txqueuelen at 37 since it bumped my laptops off the network when I tried it
at 4).

I have the first of the secondary mesh nodes flashed and ready to go. I
would like to stick to the default IPs. I'm not clear about what I should
do next to get this working.

Andrew

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Re: [Bloat] getting started with mesh networking

[Dave Taht]

On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Andrew Hammond
<andrew.george.hammond@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been trying to follow the directions at
> http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/Mesh
> however they assume a lot of prior knowledge. I'd like to set up mesh
> networking where I simply add routers to extend the mesh. I have my primary
> / uplink router configured and working. I have enabled AHCP on it and
> applied the changes to /etc/config/network as described (except I left
> txqueuelen at 37 since it bumped my laptops off the network when I tried it
> at 4).

Very cool.

1) I spent some time this morning cleaning up and I hope vastly
improved the document

http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/Mesh

Let me know if that helps.

2) Some changes in openwrt in late october in the startup scripts and
lua broke startup for AHCP. :(

if the AHCPD process is not running after you configure it, then I
have to come up with a fix, but it can be made to go with a one liner
in /etc/rc.local and generating the 3 line ahcp.conf file

I'll fix it for rc8

3) I discovered that txqueuelen 40 was less buggy than 37, and of late
I've been working with some QFQ and SFQ based scripts
   that make much longer txqueuelens feasible, and even desirable.

4) Getting the first two nodes to work is hard. Getting a third much
less so. It's really all the backward compatability cruft (DHCP,
firewalling, nat notably) that's the real source of the problem...

I can help on irc, but not til tuesday. There is also a ##babeld on irc



> I have the first of the secondary mesh nodes flashed and ready to go. I
> would like to stick to the default IPs. I'm not clear about what I should do
> next to get this working.
> Andrew
> _______________________________________________
> Bloat mailing list
> Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
>
>



-- 
Dave Täht
SKYPE: davetaht
US Tel: 1-239-829-5608
FR Tel: 0638645374
http://www.bufferbloat.net

Re: [Bloat] getting started with mesh networking

[Dave Taht]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:28 AM, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Andrew Hammond
> <andrew.george.hammond@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have been trying to follow the directions at
>> http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/Mesh
>> however they assume a lot of prior knowledge. I'd like to set up mesh
>> networking where I simply add routers to extend the mesh. I have my primary
>> / uplink router configured and working. I have enabled AHCP on it and
>> applied the changes to /etc/config/network as described (except I left
>> txqueuelen at 37 since it bumped my laptops off the network when I tried it
>> at 4).


To answer your specific question:

renumber the client router. if ahcp is working it should automagically
pick up the nearest machines and 'route'.

If not, tis easiest to set them up as servers routers for now.

Depending on the density of your mesh and the relative need for
failover you will
want to use multiple 5 and 2.4 ghz channels in any given area.

>
> Very cool.
>
> 1) I spent some time this morning cleaning up and I hope vastly
> improved the document
>
> http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/Mesh
>
> Let me know if that helps.
>
> 2) Some changes in openwrt in late october in the startup scripts and
> lua broke startup for AHCP. :(
>
> if the AHCPD process is not running after you configure it, then I
> have to come up with a fix, but it can be made to go with a one liner
> in /etc/rc.local and generating the 3 line ahcp.conf file
>
> I'll fix it for rc8
>
> 3) I discovered that txqueuelen 40 was less buggy than 37, and of late
> I've been working with some QFQ and SFQ based scripts
>   that make much longer txqueuelens feasible, and even desirable.
>
> 4) Getting the first two nodes to work is hard. Getting a third much
> less so. It's really all the backward compatability cruft (DHCP,
> firewalling, nat notably) that's the real source of the problem...
>
> I can help on irc, but not til tuesday. There is also a ##babeld on irc
>
>
>
>> I have the first of the secondary mesh nodes flashed and ready to go. I
>> would like to stick to the default IPs. I'm not clear about what I should do
>> next to get this working.
>> Andrew
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bloat mailing list
>> Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Täht
> SKYPE: davetaht
> US Tel: 1-239-829-5608
> FR Tel: 0638645374
> http://www.bufferbloat.net
>



-- 
Dave Täht
SKYPE: davetaht
US Tel: 1-239-829-5608
FR Tel: 0638645374
http://www.bufferbloat.net

Re: [Bloat] getting started with mesh networking

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> however they assume a lot of prior knowledge. I'd like to set up mesh
> networking where I simply add routers to extend the mesh.

I would suggest that you use an ordinary Linux distribution to set up
your first AHCP server, following the instructions in the upstream ahcpd
readme[1].  Once you've set up a functioning AHCP server and got your first
AHCP client to configure itself, it should be trivial to add additonal
nodes to your network, whether using upstream or OpenWRT-modified
versions of ahcpd and babeld.

Sorry for that, but the OpenWRT packaging of ahcpd is somewhat opaque --
for some reason, the OpenWRT folks insist on rewriting everything in
their own configuration language.

-- Juliusz

[1] http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/ahcp/README.text