[Commotion-dev] Unifying Serval and Commotion Mesh

[Hans of Guardian]

On Dec 17, 2012, at 4:47 PM, Jeremy Lakeman wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 3:34 AM, Josh King <jking at chambana.net> wrote:
>> Hi Paul,
>> 
>> This is something that we've been thinking about recently here at OTI as
>> well. I think it makes a lot of sense to standardize around SSIDs and
>> BSSIDs. Additionally, I'm working on rewriting the way that the OpenWRT
>> firmware handles connecting to the mesh as a standalone C daemon and
>> library, something that I hope may eventually serve as a cross-platform
>> way to manage configuration profiles and wireless connection issues in a
>> generalized fashion.
>> 
>> In the short term, I've been thinking too about how to make sure that
>> the Commotion Android application and Serval can work together
>> effectively on the same device. Would it make sense for Serval to make
>> use of Meshtether to establish the wifi network if it's available, and
>> for Meshtether to connect to the Serval application's instance of
>> servald for encryption, if available?
>> 
> 
> If the Commotion Android application broadcasts an intent when the
> network is up, it would be fairly easy for Serval to start our daemon
> and communicate on that interface.

I think MeshTether will send one of the standard "wifi connected" broadcasts since it is not telling Android to disable the wifi first.  That's the biggest difference between the Serval and MeshTether approaches.  MethTether is aiming to provide transparent IP networking based on the mesh, while Serval turns off Android's awareness of the wifi and sets things up how it needs them to be. In any case, it would be easy to add custom broadcasts if that's needed.

About approaches to merging the mesh parts, I think we need to first agree on common approaches, like:

- make everything apparent to Android as possible (connected status, SSID, etc)
- provide transparent TCP/IP networking (no special tricks needed to use it)
- specific scripting technique for adhoc mode setups (edify or whatever)
- etc.

MeshTether is a bit messy in parts, but its working well on the devices it can get into adhoc mode.  That's the part that Serval has lots of goodies for: getting lots of devices into adhoc mode.

.hc