[Olsr-users] Current OLSR protocol

[Charles Wyble]

L. Aaron Kaplan wrote:
> On May 22, 2009, at 3:46 PM, Damian Philipp wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm currently gathering some information about available routing  
>> protocols for mesh networks for my diploma thesis. So far, I have  
>> found rather confusing things about OLSR. From http://www.olsr.org/?q=background 
>>  I gathered that most of the optimizations to get olsr working were  
>> code improvements. However, https://www.open-mesh.org/wiki/the-olsr-story 
>>  paints a somewhat different picture with inherent instabilities in  
>> the original concept of olsr which is why they started over with  
>> BATMAN.
> 
> 
> Well... Let me give you my personal opinion on that.
> Mainly Elektra from BATMAN was very often behind a FUD strategy  
> against OLSR.

Right. I have noticed this as well.

> Which is weird but it is like that. Maybe it is in order to start the  
> new project BATMAN.

Yes that does appear to have been the reason.

>  From the OLSR.org side, this is great that there is a new attempt at  
> routing protocols since we can all learn from that and from the new  
> problems that a new routing protocol will give in practice.
> 
> However, I would *not* take the-olsr-story on open-mesh.org as  
> correct, final, authoritative nor complete.

Correct.

> Fact is that mesh research is an ongoing process and we can all simply  
> learn.

Very true.


> 
>> From what I've read on the freifunk homepage, olsr is still widely  
>> in use on freifunk networks.
> it is.

It certainly is.

> 
> no, ... open-mesh.org is a lot of personal opinion by Elektra.
> So, again... take that with a grain of salt please ;-)


Yep. Please take with a grain of salt.


> 
> There was even once a paper published by Elektra and some insitute in  
> South Africa which again "proves" that OLSR does not scale and stuff  
> like that.
> 
> In the history of routing protocols you can always find this trend  
> that some proposals were made, some succeeded in acceptance (i.e. they  
> were made an RFC) and then a *great* deal* of work was still needed to  
> actually make it scalable and secure in practice.
> 
> Take BGP for example: we (== the internet) is still fighting with some  
> basic security problems of BGP [1]. So even the development of BGP is  
> still ongoing.
> 
> Summary: it is the implementation which counts!
> And OLSR.org put *a lot* of effort into that the last 2 years.


Very very very well said. :)