[Olsr-users] Getting Started

[Henning Rogge]

Am Wed September 16 2009 11:28:46 schrieb Owain Davies:
> Hi,
>
> I have been trying to understand how olsr works. When a program, for
> example ping, sends a packet to an ip address how does it enter the olsr
> network, and get wrapped in an olsr message? Does it add something to
> the routing table, or create a new interface, or link into iptables. I
> don't really understand how it offers its service to the computer.
One OLSRd routing agent runs on each node of your OLSR network. These 
instances communicate with each other and use this data for setting a routing 
table inside the OS kernel. The unicast traffic itself will never be handled 
or modified by the OLSRd routing agent itself.

> Also is there any documentation on how this all links together,
IETF RFC 3626 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3626) describes the basic 
structure of the OLSR (version 1) protocol. OLSRd added a few additional 
features like fisheye metric (sometimes called "hazy link state") and a 
routing metric called ETX (expected transmission count). The routing metric is 
used to measure the quality of the links between the OLSRd instances and is 
critical for a well working mesh network.

> or how
> the olsr modules link into the system. (sorry, probably more a question
> for the dev list).
Each OLSRd contains a small OS specific part to set up sockets and add/delete 
routing table entries of the OS.

> Is there a getting Started HOWTO? I am trying to put together a mesh of
> phones, netbooks, and tablets, running linux, windows and android. Early
> stages I know but...
I would suggest to start with one hardware platform and get OLSR running on 
both of them. Debug output and txtinfo plugin will be very useful for you to 
determine if your net is up and running. If you get a small network running, 
your can add other hardware platforms.

Henning Rogge

-- 
Diplom-Informatiker Henning Rogge , Fraunhofer-Institut für
Kommunikation, Informationsverarbeitung und Ergonomie FKIE
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