[Babel-users] Openwrt support for later versions of babeld

[Dave Täht]

Juliusz Chroboczek <Juliusz.Chroboczek at pps.jussieu.fr> writes:

> Hi Dave,
>
>> I have been prototyping a new community wireless network down in
>> Nicaragua. The terrain is hilly and well suited for meshy solutions...
>
> Do you have any photographs?

Of the people? The schools?

I have a google earth map I've been developing. I need to put a dozen
more points on it though, two new towers, a bunch of schools...

My current problem child is casa llanta 
http://www.casallanta.com/Home.html

You can fetch the current google map from
http://www.teklibre.com/~d/bando4barrios/b4barrios.kml but I hope to get
around to updating it futher this weekend. Zoom in on Nicaragua. My
house is "Casa Yanke"

> Yes, it will, although I recommend 2.6.21 or later for any serious IPv6
> work.

I concur. Regrettably my current radios are mostly 2.4 based, so I am
trying to decide on a good, hackable, replacement for the buildout that
tracks current kernel developments.

>
>> 2) I saw patches for tcpdump. Is anyone working on a dissector for
>> wireshark?
>
> Not to my knowledge.  It should be easy.

I'll put it on my list.

>> 3) Is radvd still necessary in a babel/ahcp environment?
>
> No, ahcpd takes care of configuration.

Excellent.

>
>> 4) What radios are people using with babel?
>
> My current favourite are Foneras, but we've also had success with the
> Asus WL-500GP and the stock WRT.  We're also using laptops, which is
> more convenient for testing and monitoring.

I think I need a bit more range than this!

>
>> I've been looking over ubquity's new routers and thinking I would use
>> those (8MB flash, 32MB ram, MIMO) in the future,
>
> Careful here -- make sure that the wireless hardware supports ad-hoc mode.
>

Why is ad-hoc required? Shouldn't you be able to pull statistics from an
more conventional configuration? 

>> 5) I do love the web interface to olsr. I can imagine something similar
>> could be built for babel...
>
> As you justly note, the user-friendly interface does not belong in Babel
> itself.  The idea is that Babel is able to communicate with an external
> monitoring process over a TCP socket.  There's one monitor that has been
> developed last year,
>
>     http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/babel/BabelTool.png

Picture, no code?

> There's no reason why the same interface couldn't be used by a web
> interface.
>
> To see what the raw, low-level interface is like, run babeld with "-g
> 33123" on the command line.  Then do
>
>   telnet localhost 33123

Thank you! That increases my comfort level a lot.

>
> and you should see a mention of every change to babeld's internal
> tables.
>
>> 6) Is there a AHCP hook to hook into name service updates?
>
> No.

Ok.

>
> Note that AHCP normally uses stateless configuration for IPv6.  If you
> have any good ideas, I'm listening.

Nsupdate is a rather big binary but I tend to view name service as a
critical missing link for sanely understanding complex networks. I am
sort of at the point where I can recognise my ipv6 prefixes at a glance
but that's me....

At this point I plan to pair many routers with sheeva plugs, so I can
gain real bind9 and other higher end services like squid.

(See also the "pocobelle" postings on my blog)

>
>> 7) What happens in the case of IPv4 multicast (for example, squid ICP
>> multicast)? 
>
> There is no support for multicast in Babel.  I do not know what it would
> take to get Babel to cooperate with something like PIM-SM.

Ok...

>
>> I will continue my reading and compiling....
>
> Please let us know how it goes.
>
>                                         Juliusz
>

-- 
Dave Taht http://the-edge.blogspot.com
"Most people know my father as the despotic 
 warlord that rules europa but he does have his 
 musing sparky qualities.

 Do you know he really loves waffles?" 
			 - Gil Wulfenbach