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

[Preston Rhea]

Good line of thought Seamus.

I feel like this question may be suited for the Discussion list so
less-technical users could learn, and contribute to, the design of
this process.

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Seamus Tuohy <s2e at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Commotion-dev mailing list
> Commotion-dev at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-dev
>



-- 
Preston Rhea
Program Associate, Open Technology Institute
New America Foundation
+1-202-570-9770
Twitter: @prestonrhea