[Cerowrt-users] engaging developers and users [#314]

Thu Dec 15 04:07:59 EST 2011

Hello Dave,

I'm running cerowrt on day-to-day basis on my wndr3800 for quite a while
and it works like a charm. It is rc7-smoketest10 build. Managed to
configure everything I needed apart from dyndns client which is not a big
issue anyway.
So far wndr3800+cerowrt is the best performer out of many routers I tried.
I tested wndr3800 stock, linksys e3000 and e4200 with stock and tomatousb,
pfsense 2.0 appliance, cradlepoint mbr1400 and some others. Speedtest on
wndr3800+cerowrt is constantly at or almost at the top of the list and
during the speed test ping times are not deteriorating as badly as for the
other routers. Feature-wise cerowrt is also the best (for my particular
setup), so currently it is my main router at home even though initially I
bought it for playing and testing.

I've just received another wndr3800 and going to install openwrt on it to
compare them side-by-side and to have a playground for routers.

Overall, excellent job, Dave! I'm keeping my eye on cerowrt.

Thanks,
Max

On 15 December 2011 18:14, Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com> wrote:

> our anti-phishing system kicked back on the numeric urls in this, fixed
> now.
>
> The reason why cerowrt lives on the 172 dot 30 dot 42 dot X address is
> that it had been my hope that others working on this project would plug
> *two* routers into their home network - one for the day-to-day effort of
> keeping their internet access up and running (on 192 dot 168 dot zero dot
> one), and a cerowrt box for analyzing both routers behavior.
>
> *I* don't run it as my day-to-day device at the moment. From where I sit,
> it's a test tool - an increasingly good one - for coming up with solutions
> to bufferbloat, and fixing the whole home router disaster with things like
> ipv6, proxying, dns, etc... it has oprofile, and debugging tools by
> default, etc, etc.
>
> I had planned to get to where we had stable releases that could be used
> day-to-day, but it's been a while since we had one, and I feel that we're
> going to make some progress on the core bufferbloat problem next quarter,
> and not have a stable release.
>
> I'm GLAD to have users and testers - some generations of cerowrt are
> running for people like jg, esr, & each, and have enormous stability and
> uptimes - I don't know who else is running a generation of cerowrt
> day-to-day frankly, there's been a lot of downloads - but there will always
> be something broken in a smoketest or rc, that may not be able to be fixed
> very quickly. Or something crazy we're doing - like routing vs bridging -
> that exposes a problem that we needed to know about....
>
> Recently, that happened with samba. And while I hope that's fixed now (in
> a couple ways - wins appears to be working, and I also have a largely
> untested samba 3.6.1 package, it needs to get tested at some point in next
> year's development cycle)
>
> http://www.bufferbloat.net/issues/314
> http://www.bufferbloat.net/issues/303
>
> I'd really like to use samba again personally, I used to use it a lot.
> These days I tend to use sshfs, and that's zillions of times slower than
> samba.
>
> Having a user support community and people testing release candidates and
> smoketests is very important to me, too! I LOVED finding out how to make
> samba work right...
>
> So, high on my list is coming up with a proper way of stressing what's on
> the front page of the documentation, and setting (low!) expectations, and
> keeping people engaged...
>
> From: http://cero2.bufferbloat.net/cerowrt/
>
> "CeroWrt <http://cero2.bufferbloat.net/cerowrt/about.html> is an OpenWrt<http://www.openwrt.org/>router platform for use by individuals, researchers, and students
> interested in advancing the state of the art on the Internet. Specifically,
> it is aimed at investigating the problems of latency under load,
> bufferbloat, wireless-n<http://cero2.bufferbloat.net/cerowrt/tcp.html#wireless>,
> QoS <http://cero2.bufferbloat.net/cerowrt/tcp.html#qos>, and the effects
> of various TCP algorithms<http://cero2.bufferbloat.net/cerowrt/tcp.html#tcp>on shared networks."
>
> If there is some place in the doc where we are not putting up large
> warning signs - 'BUGS AHEAD. DANGEROUS CODE. DON'T EXPERIMENT WITH THIS ON
> WIVES OR CHILDREN' - I'd to find it and fix it.
>
> I'm perfectly happy with the hardware and core software itself at this
> point. I wasn't, this time last year.
>
> I'd like everybody in the open source and network research communities to
> get TWO routers based on this chipset for christmas! Use one day to day,
> running openwrt, and the other experimenting with a future outlined by the
> ideas in cerowrt.
>
> 1) I'd like to come up with a good way for people to plug this in as a
> 'secondary' router.
>
> Right now that requires turning off nat, and telling the upstream router
> to give the cerowrt router a static ip and route to the 172 dot 30 dot 42
> dot 0 slash 24 address. Perhaps we can take some screenshots of how to do
> that on more common CPE?
>
> Network renumbering involves running a couple line sed script.
>
> http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/Default_network_numbering
>
> I hope to make renumbering a router easier with a gui, but you know, it's
> a 3 line sed script and a couple hundred lines of gui to write to make that
> easier.
> I'm also thinking of merely writing an RFC standardizing that 192 dot 168
> dot zero dot 1 should be the number ALL routers come up on, and the number
> all home networks should use. For april 1st.
>
> Bridging is also possible... but not very.
>
> 2) Another thought is to do builds of the ceropackages repository for
> straight openwrt, and point people at that for things like the bleeding
> edge samba stuff.
>
> I like ceropackages, it's a good way to spin up and debug a new package,
> with a low barrier to entry for new people to openwrt - after which it has
> always been my intent to push the stable stuff upstream. Multiple grad
> students have used the ceropackages concept to get up to speed somewhat and
> steve walker's been great about polishing those up. (and also submitting
> packages of his own)
>
> 3) Is to more aggressively push up the stuff that works into std openwrt.
> This is currently blocked by something stupid
>
> http://www.bufferbloat.net/issues/319
>
> or convince someone to push the stable stuff up to openwrt on a regular
> basis.
>
> 5) Increase the number of people doing active development and able to fix
> bugs and documentation.
>
> Any other ideas as to accomplish these mutually incompatable goals - gain
> developers, increase the userbase, gain testers,get good day to day and
> long term resolve, solve bufferbloat, establish world peace, and be able to
> do bleeding edge R&D... are welcomed.
>
> I do not ever want to disappoint people with our efforts, and will work
> diligently at fixing every problem exposed by the new stuff we're doing.
> One of my first thoughts was pretty simple in this area though - try to do
> less new stuff!
>
> --
> Dave Täht
> SKYPE: davetaht
> US Tel: 1-239-829-5608
> FR Tel: 0638645374
> http://www.bufferbloat.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-users mailing list
> Cerowrt-users at lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-users
>
>

-- 
Thanks,
Max
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