[Babel-users] Restarting MeshPoint – seeking advice on routing for crisis/disaster scenarios

[Valent@MeshPoint]

Good point on the pulsed jamming and routing update churn.

I have a rough idea how this can go wrong, but I am not deeply familiar 
with how different protocols try to mitigate it in practice. Have you 
looked into how Babel, BATMAN adv, or OLSRv2 handle this today? For 
example whether they bias toward stability explicitly, damp updates, or 
treat flapping links differently under load or attack.

I am especially curious whether any of them have mechanisms specifically 
meant to avoid being driven into constant recomputation by intermittent 
interference rather than genuine topology change.

If this is drifting off topic for the list, I am happy to continue via 
direct email.

Best regards
Valent


------ Original Message ------
>From "Henning Rogge" <hrogge at gmail.com>
To "Juliusz Chroboczek" <jch at irif.fr>
Cc "Valent Turkovic" <valent at meshpointone.com>; 
babel-users at alioth-lists.debian.net
Date 18.12.2025. 10:49:56
Subject Re: [Babel-users] Restarting MeshPoint – seeking advice on 
routing for crisis/disaster scenarios

>On Thu, Dec 18, 2025 at 1:49 AM Juliusz Chroboczek <jch at irif.fr> wrote:
>>  > I know that in active conflict zones Wi-Fi can be jammed
>>
>>  The nice thing about having a layer 3 routing protocol is that you can
>>  combine technologies: Babel is designed to handle a network that has both
>>  wired and wireless links, and that uses multiple wireless technologies at
>>  the same time (WiFi at various frequencies, UWB, infrared laser, etc.).
>>  In such a network, Babel should be able to find a path consisting of
>>  whichever links are not jammed at a given time.
>>
>>  Of course, this assumes that the opponent is not able to jam all links
>>  simultaneously.
>
>If you expect malicious jamming you might want to spend some more
>brainpower into your routing metric... to make sure you prefer stable
>links over good but unstable ones... otherwise the "enemy" will just
>jam you in pulses and kill your network by constant routing updates.
>
>>  > - BATMAN-adv-style seamless mobility
>>
>>  I started working on sroamd[1], which implements seamless mobility at
>>  layer 3, but then Covid happened, and I got interested in
>>  videoconferencing.  I guess we could revive it if there's interest.
>>
>>  [1]: https://github.com/jech/sroamd
>>
>>  > - Better large-scale behaviour for hundreds-to-thousands of nodes in
>>  >   sparse or battery-constrained setups
>>
>>  Could you please clarify?
>
>Yeah, scalability is always an issue, especially in networks with
>changing conditions (e.g. hostile jamming).
>
>Henning Rogge