[Commotion-dev] Questions for a "learnable" mesh network

[Seamus Tuohy]

Hey,

So I have been working on the "learnable mesh" problem for most Sunday
and have made some good headway exploring how we can make mesh
networking intuitively learned when a user configures their devices.
This is a somewhat long e-mail so I have  surrounded the actual
questions with the html tag <question> for parsing, though I know that
will cause issues with the non-plain text e-mail readers in the world.

In order to sync the "ideal" with the practical I need to identify some
of the underlying capabilities before moving on. I was going to write
them down and explore them on my own, but I figured that having this
discussion publicly would be better.

The most important aspect of helping a user "learn" about mesh, is a
short feedback loop for users who are customizing their device. In
working with our mesh glossary this weekend I came to the realization
that the most important component to our connectivity based tool is the
interface. To this end, I need to identify a way for a user to interact
with a virtual wireless interface freely without cutting off the
interface they are connected to the device with. This configuration
interface can either be another virtual interface or another physical
one (like ethernet.) Once, we get the desktop and mobile clients this
will not be as much of an issue as the user will not be using a network
interface in order to access the configuration page. But, until that
point, <question> is there a way to allow a user to quickly customize
one wireless interface without disabling, disrupting, or otherwise
impeding their access to the internals of a node? </question> e.g
keeping one physical interface intact while manipulating the virtual
interfaces on another. If not, <question> can we, by putting an
interface on monitor mode user some intelligent parsing to simulate the
focused field of vision that will occur when a node changes settings?
</question>

Once we have obtained a tight feedback loop by allowing a user to
sandbox a specific "configuration" interface without disrupting their
connection to the node we need to create an environment to allow a user
to explore the "interface" between the device and multiple external
networks. This has multiple implications. First, we need to take in
traffic on the interface and translate it into useful data for a new
user. (eg. taking beacon traffic and translating it into a list of
advertised devices, much like network manager does, but with all the
traffic seen by the device) This will allow a user to explore changing
channels, frequencies (2.4/5/900), security settings, and mesh protocols
freely and see what communications become available. By providing a
filter for the traffic seen we can not only provide immediate feedback,
but we can start to help new users intuitively understand that the
choices they make on a wireless interface filter the communication that
they receive much like on an AM/FM radio. This will allow for us to
create an "interactive puzzle" out of configuring a node that will
replace the current opaque process that exists because of the lack of a
comprehensive feedback loop. As such, <question> what is the best (most
easily parsable, and full of info) tool to get access to data that is
running over an interface (both incoming and outgoing.) </question>

I will work up some mock-ups of the interface based upon the answers to
these questions and send them out once I have made a bit more headway.

s2e