[Commotion-dev] Lab setup and initial test results

[Paul Gardner-Stephen]

This is really interesting.

Did they create the facility specially, or is it a facility that
already exists, and they have given you access to?

Paul.

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 6:14 AM, Will Hawkins
<hawkinsw at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:
> Hello everyone!
>
> As Andrew mentioned in previous emails, we have partnered with a local
> organization to help us create a physical laboratory testbed for doing
> performance and Q/A testing on Commotion.
>
> The testbed consists of several RF-isolating enclosures connected
> together with a special RF switch. Each enclosure contains a single
> Ubiquity Picostation running Commotion. Wireless connections (and their
> quality) among the Commotion nodes are determined by the RF switch. We
> have deployed 8 nodes in this environment.
>
> The enclosures are made by Ramsey and the RF Switch is made by JFW
> Industries
> (http://www.jfwindustries.com/catalog/Programmable_Attenuator_Assemblies_19_Rack-48-1.html).
>
>
> The RF switch is programmed with a series of XML documents. These XML
> documents can represent either
> a) Literal attenuation values for the RF signal between nodes, or
> b) "Geographic" location of nodes in 2D space where attenuation values
> are determined using a freespace loss model.
>
> The following is an example of an XML document that configures the
> switch with literal attentuation values (a):
>
> <MESHTEST>
>   <PATHLOSS>
>     <INPUTS>1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8</INPUTS>
>     <MATRIX>
> 200     25      200     200     200     200     200     200
> 25      200     25      200     200     200     200     200
> 200     25      200     200     200     200     25      200
> 200     200     200     200     200     200     200     200
> 200     200     200     200     200     200     200     200
> 200     200     200     200     200     200     200     200
> 200     200     25      200     200     200     200     25
> 200     200     200     200     200     200     25      200
>     </MATRIX>
>   </PATHLOSS>
> </MESHTEST>
>
> The following is an example of an XML document that configures the
> switch using geographic node locations (b):
> <MESHTEST>
>   <PHYSICAL UNITS="meters" DIMENSION="2" MODEL="freespace">
>     <NODE INPUT="1" X="400" Y="549"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="2" X="806" Y="64"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="3" X="919" Y="82" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="4" X="150" Y="844" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="5" X="910" Y="151" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="6" X="582" Y="807" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="7" X="286" Y="217" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="8" X="50" Y="285" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="9" X="26" Y="730" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="10" X="24" Y="710" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="11" X="797" Y="110" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>     <NODE INPUT="12" X="105" Y="653" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>   </PHYSICAL>
> </MESHTEST>
>
> We are going to post some additional information about the environment
> itself (and pictures!) on the blog. I will send a link when that post is
> available.
>
> For our first test, we configured 5 Commotion nodes in a "line" and
> taken performance measurements using iperf (tcp):
> a < - > b < - > c < - > g < - > h
> a <---------------------------> 5.16 Mbps
> a <-------------------> 6.83 Mbps
> a <-----------> 10.8 Mbps
> a <---> 26.5 Mbps
>
> Besides performance tests, we are hoping to use this environment for
> regression testing new builds. We are also looking for input from the
> Commotion dev community about how to integrate this lab environment with
> real-world test scenarios. Specifically, we would love to get some input
> from Ben about how this might augment the testing that he is doing.
>
> Will
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