[Babel-users] link costs

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> it actually *is* a wired interface - just using some strange bridge
> setup. We have this mostly because olsr is pretty dumb concerning wired
> links, so we try to save some hops.

I see.

> I have solved this special problem by configuring the device as a
> brouter (bridging olsr related traffic, routing babel related traffic)
> and installing babel on this device too.

Interesting -- how do you do that?  arptables?  Could you show your setup?

>> I'm currently thinking of something like
>> 
>>   interface eth* wireless no cost 128

> Would this make babel listen on all interfaces eth*, that it can find
> or would babel only listen on those interfaces given on the command
> line.

I'm thinking of the latter.

> In the latter case it might be a cause of user errors that the interface
> configuration is split in two parts, one on the command line, the other
> one in the config file...

The way I see it -- /etc/babel.conf is the source of configuration data,
while the command line is the source of information about actions to be
taken.  In other words, I'm making a distinction between what needs to be
done (given on the command line), and how to do it (given in /etc/babel.conf).

But I agree that the distinction might be tenuous -- it might make more
sense to unconditionally add all interfaces listed in /etc/babel.conf (and
hence disallow wildcards).  Opinions?

>> The keyword ``interface'' is followed with a shell regexp, which specifies
>> which interfaces this clause applies to.  The rest is a sequence of
>> keyword/value pairs.
>> 
>> What are the per-interface properties we need?  I'm thinking of
>> 
>>   wireless
>>   cost
>>   hello-interval
>>   idle-time
>>   idle-hello-interval
>>
>> Anything else?
>
> This seems to be fine.

Hmm, there's also ``carrier-sense'' (-l).

                                        Juliusz