[Commotion-dev] Lab setup and initial test results

[Paul Gardner-Stephen]

Cool.

Paul.

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 8:58 AM, Will Hawkins
<hawkinsw at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:
> It is a facility that does lots of RF testing and we were able to work
> out a cooperative agreement. It's a really neat lab. We'll send around
> pictures and things (via that promised blog post) that will give a
> better sense of what the lab looks like and how it works.
>
>
>
> Will
>
> On 01/15/2013 04:22 PM, Paul Gardner-Stephen wrote:
>> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Commotion-dev mailing list
>>> Commotion-dev at lists.chambana.net
>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-dev
>>>
>>