[Cerowrt-devel] Perfection vs. Good Enough

[Rich Brown]

Folks,

I am so pleased with the state of CeroWrt. The software has improved enormously, to the point that we all get really good performance from our routers at home. If you want a real eyeful of the progress we’ve made, check list at the bottom of the Release Notes: http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/CeroWrt_310_Release_Notes

CeroWrt is working great. We have two great testimonials for how it has improved network performance (from Fred Stratton and David Personnette, see  https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/cerowrt-devel/2014-January/001961.html and https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/cerowrt-devel/2014-January/001970.html)

I have been using 3.10.24-8 at home without hiccups (after I turned on SQM :-) since it was shipped. We’ve got a really great program.

But - I’m afraid we’re letting perfection be the enemy of the good. Here are a couple indications:

- The rest of the world doesn’t know about this good work. If you look at the front page of the site, we’re recommending CeroWrt 3.7.5-2 from last February. It has Codel, but not much more. Our understanding of the world has expanded by an order of magnitude, but we’re not making it available to anyone.

- The entire discussion of link layers has held us back. That’s why I proposed to cut back the choices to ATM and None, and let people figure out the details if they want to/have time to optimize.

- We have tons of updated modules (dnsmasq, IPv6, quagga, mosh) which we should get out to the world. 

- The entire product is much tighter, works better, and we can be proud of it. As Dave Täht pointed out in a recent note:

> Compared to the orders of magnitude we already get from fq codel, the sum benefit 
> of these [Link Layer Adaptation] fixes is in the very small percentage points.

This is true of the entire CeroWrt build.

Proposal:

We should “finish up the last bits” to make 3.10.24-8 (or a close derivative) be a stable release. It has been working fine AFAIK for lots and lots of us. It certainly has been as well tested as other branches. I see the following:

- Look through the release notes (very bottom of the page at the URL above) and review the items that Dave was worried about for the 3.10.24-8 release

- Make a decision on Link Layer Adaptation choices, and implement it.

- What else? 

Best,

Rich