[Olsr-users] Olsr-users Digest, Vol 6, Issue 1

[John Clark]

Ben McCarthy schrieb:
>
> Hi,
>
> I get the same problems also with MADWIFI in ad-hoc mode and I’m 
> curious to know if there are any better alternatives to MADWIFI that 
> people can suggest for building MANET testbeds?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ben
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* (spam-protected) 
> [mailto:(spam-protected)] *On Behalf Of *Florian RODARY
> *Sent:* 02 November 2007 01:32
> *To:* (spam-protected)
> *Subject:* Re: [Olsr-users] Olsr-users Digest, Vol 6, Issue 1
>
> FYI, I got numerous problems with the latest Madwifi drivers too, and 
> Linksys cards based on a recent atheros, with kernels oops everytime I 
> tried to switch in ad-hoc mode when more than one computer were 
> already listening on the same ESSID.
> I just switched to old classical Orinoco Silver with orinoco_cs module 
> (and not hostap_cs, beware).
>

I have not had a reliable 'ad-hoc' mode with Madwifi since a very old 
version, ca. 2005 vintage. When I've had to demo 'ad-hoc' with Madwifi
The Latest Generation, I've had to use 'ahdemo' mode, which is a very 
modified ad-hoc, which does not perform beaconing. I still
have seen some strange behavior, but for the most part it is capable of 
performing 'demo' quality link connection...

I have posted a number of times about this problem, and unfortunately, 
for the last year I have not been able to get enough project
time/money to look into it in detail. Since Ad-Hoc use to work... it is 
clear that someone somewhere made an 'optimization' to the code,
and broke the support. (or didn't make the transition correctly from 
'old-madwifi' to 'madwifi-next-generation'.).

There have been several purported patches that 'fix' the ad-hoc 
problems, but other than a few last year, as I say, I've not had
the time to look into them further.

There are many reasons for using the latest HAL and madwifi in addition 
to the newer cards, there is some limited support for
5 and 10 Mhz bandwidth, as well as 4.9 "Public Safety Band" and the like.

Now, that being said... you may try FreeBSD which uses the same HAL (in 
fact that's the OS where the HAL is essentially developed
by Sam Leffler...). I've set up a FreeBSD net bootable configuration, 
but alas... no time to really go through and check things out.

John Clark.

That, that being said... The Wife has just done the 'Give 1, get 1' 
donation for Nicholas Negroponte's 'Laptop for every Child' project. One
of the claims, is that the software in the laptop does 'mesh' 
networking. So, I'm going to 'get 2' and have a look at them...