Hi All,<br><br>I'm happy to read that the Hackday just past went well! The <a href="https://code.commotionwireless.net/projects/commotion/wiki/Hackday-Roadmap-Notes">roadmap wiki page</a> looks pretty dense, although unfortunately my suggestion would be to increase its density by adding <b>802.11s support</b>.
My recent work to extract Robin/Cloudtrax dashboard stuff into a
standalone package was part of a larger effort to get a modern
replacement for a Robin nodes. And, this is what is now prompting my
recommendation for 802.11s support.<br><br>Since
I have the expectation of remotely re-flashing all the Robin nodes in
the field sometime soon, I did throughput tests for old vs new to make
sure I wouldn't be deploying a regression. And, looks like 802.11g
adhoc meshing, even under Attitude Adjustment with the latest atheros
drivers, is <i>15% to 20% slower</i> than the ahdemo meshing done by
Kamikaze+madwifi based Robin firmware! This performance penalty appears
to come from the fact adhoc mode require beacons, while ah-demo does
not, hence it not being supported by the 802.11 standard. Furthermore,
the mac80211 / compat-wireless radio drivers currently packaged into
OpenWRT appear to enforce a maximum 1000ms interval for such beacons.<br><br>For 5.8GHz adhoc, a potential work-around is to use short slot-times as implemented in this patch:<br><br><a href="https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/1835531/">https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/1835531/</a><br>
<br>2.8GHz
adhoc, however, must still use long slot times to remain
standards-compliant. The work-around is that 802.11s meshing can use
short slot times, which this patch implements:<br><br><a href="https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/2050741/">https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/2050741/</a><br><br>While
I do admit that doing speed tests on near-obsolete platforms like ath5k
would normally yield diminishing returns, these slot-time enhancements
should apply just as well to ath9k, too.<br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Ben West<div><a href="http://gowasabi.net" target="_blank">http://gowasabi.net</a><br><a href="mailto:ben@gowasabi.net" target="_blank">ben@gowasabi.net</a><br>
314-246-9434<br></div>