[Babel-users] a cautionary note on setting up new babel nodes

[Dave Taht]

As I am rolling out a bunch of new babel nodes, I decided to get a
cluster (2 nanos and a pico) up in the lab, where I have good
connectivity to the rest of the network, to replace an aging cluster
by the pool.

So I booted it up and configured it for the right channels and a new
set of ip addresses... didnt have good LED support at all (RSSI does
not seem to do anything)...

I got blinkenlights to sort of work, and they were lit up, kind of
solid, for some reason... [1]

...people started wandering by to complain about the network...
naturally I didnt notice because I was even closer to the exit points
than anyone else...

...to discover that I was offering the shortest path to the exit
nodes, and thus had bypassed the two existing ~50mbit links into lab
links that were located indoors and going through a thousand+ meters
of trees... that was barely doing a megabit with 800+ms of delay.
(channel diversity not working did not help either)

After that experience, I decided that I would make the firmware for
unconfigured nodes export a 512 metric, and use a high rxcost until
they were fully configured AND in place. I might disable ipv4 entirely
in favor of the autoconfigured ula openwrt has, and just start
configuring stuff based on the appearance of new ulas in the network.

[1] if you come up with a useful LED config for nanostations and
picostations, let me know.

-- 
Dave Täht
worldwide bufferbloat report:
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/results/bufferbloat
And:
What will it take to vastly improve wifi for everyone?
https://plus.google.com/u/0/explore/makewififast