[OLSR-users] Something to look at

[John Gorkos]

OLSR users-
  Deployment of my OLSR mesh is proceeding slowly, but picking up steam.  I've 
got 14 nodes deployed so far, with 6 more in the hopper ready to go.  The 
maintenance team at the apartment complex is responsible for installation, so 
I have little control over how fast things occur.

I've got a "real-time" topology map that gets updated every 60 seconds located 
here:
http://www.wildcatwireless.net/topology.png

and I'm working on a real-time, geographically accurate map that will show the 
links overlayed on a real map of the ground here:
http://www.wildcatwireless.net/cgi-bin/networkmap.pl

Unfortunately, I'm having some real problems getting mapserver (the GIS 
program I'm using) to draw lines from a perl script.  The stars represent 
nodes, but the lines between nodes are simply not being drawn.  If anyone is 
a mapserver guru, contact me.

One of the things I notice when I telnet to port 2004 is that the network is 
reconfiguring itself at a very high rate of speed:  usually on the order of 
once every second or so.  One of the problems I'm seeing is that nodes that 
are far away from the takeout point (the node on the eastern edge of the 
network, 192.168.7.1 on Lane H) can occasionally see the takeout node, but 
most of the time they cannot.  When they can, they try to route directly to 
the takeout point, and the packets get lost in the noise, and the customer 
experiences a dropout.  Eventually (+/- 30 seconds or so) the route will be 
replaced with a multi-hop route, and the customer is back in the network.  
It's EXTREMELY frustrating for everyone involved.  I'm close to offering a 
bounty for the hacker that writes a route-weighting plugin that takes 
signal/noise ratio into account.

Anyway, I welcome questions or comments.  All nodes except the primary are 
WRT54G routers with OpenWRT and OLSR 0.4.7 on them.

John Gorkos
Wildcat Wireless Internet