[Commotion-discuss] Commotion meshing between DR1(Red Hook) and PR2, web speed vs. ping speed

[Dan Staples]

On Mon 29 Jul 2013 11:12:12 AM EDT, Preston Rhea wrote:
> @Dan I checked the ETX while associated with the gateway node, but not
> the community center node - I (wrongly) assumed it would be about the
> same as before.
>
> @Ben I used speedtest.net, will try others next time.
>
> I have a follow-up to this:
>
> Lacking the admin password to the community center node
> (MtPCWN_Paloma), I SSHed in and used the command line to upload the
> sysupgrade DR1 Red Hook image to its /tmp directory and updated it
> that way. When the node came back online, it had clearly updated the
> software. Also:
>
> - It brought up the open RHIWiFi AP, as the Red Hook image tells it
> to, but I could never associate with this with either my laptop or my
> phone even though I was clearly within range,
> - It deleted the MtPCWN_Paloma open AP, but kept the
> MtPCWN_Paloma_secure AP online (also couldn't associate with this),
> - It brought back up the commotionwireless.net mesh BSSID, but even
> though I didn't go through Quickstart and the Red Hook image doesn't
> encrypt this, it wasn't associated with the gateway node and I
> couldn't get out to the Internet. I tested that by plugging in via
> Ethernet.
>
> Now I have the admin password and I plan to go back this evening to
> try and finish this. Do you think the problem with not being able to
> associate with the AP has to do with upgrading from a late version of
> PR2 via the sysupgrade image? Should I flash the factory image, and is
> there a way to do this without having to use TFTP mode (that would be
> really difficult in this case)?
>
> Thanks for the help,
>
> Preston
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Ben West <ben at gowasabi.net> wrote:
>> How do you test web speed?
>>
>> Do you use a 3rd-party service like speedtest.net?  If so, you may need to
>> first check that your ISP's connection to speedtest.net itself isn't having
>> speed issues.
>>
>> Likewise, you can try multiple 3rd-party speedtest sites, e.g.
>> http://speakeasy.net/speedtest
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 10:26 AM, Preston Rhea
>> <prestonrhea at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Yesterday evening I updated the software on a node in Mount Pleasant
>>> to DR1 (specifically the Red Hook build), the first update past PR3 in
>>> Mount Pleasant.
>>>
>>> The node I updated is a gateway node (connected to a Sprint Clearwire
>>> modem), and it meshes with a node on a community center down the
>>> street which runs PR2 (!)
>>>
>>> After updating everything, I checked some speeds. The web speed test
>>> connected to the gateway node only gave about 1.3 Mbps down, but it
>>> functioned fine. I then SSHed in to the gateway node and ran a ping
>>> test from it - average of 116 ms to ping out to 8.8.8.8.
>>>
>>> From there I SSH'ed through the mesh to the node on top of the
>>> community center and pinged 8.8.8.8 from it. It got an average of
>>> about 135 ms out. The average ETX between the two was 1.3.
>>>
>>> But when we went down to the community center and associated with its
>>> node, the splash page took forever to resolve. After clicking through
>>> it, no web page would finish resolving. I could ping out to 8.8.8.8
>>> from my laptop while associated, but it varied wildly between 1 s and
>>> 90 ms.
>>>
>>> My thought is that it is just old buggy software that needs to be
>>> updated - I just wanted to share in case folks thought there might be
>>> something else going on.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Preston Rhea
>>> Field Analyst, Open Technology Institute
>>> New America Foundation
>>> +1-202-570-9770
>>> Twitter: @prestonrhea
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Commotion-discuss mailing list
>>> Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ben West
>> http://gowasabi.net
>> ben at gowasabi.net
>> 314-246-9434
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Commotion-discuss mailing list
>> Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
>>
>
>
>

Since it kept  the old AP SSID, it sounds like when you upgraded, you 
did the equivalent of checking the "Save settings" checkbox when 
upgrading via the web interface (I haven't flashed via command-line, so 
I'm not sure how that works). In other words, it didn't overwrite the 
settings when you upgraded it, which needs to happen. I can almost 
guarantee that's why you can't associate with the AP, as something 
similar has happened to me before. I would recommend next time to 
upgrade it via the web interface, and make sure the "Save settings" box 
is unchecked.

Let us know how things go!

--
Dan Staples

Open Technology Institute
https://commotionwireless.net
OpenPGP key: http://disman.tl/pgp.asc
Fingerprint: 2480 095D 4B16 436F 35AB 7305 F670 74ED BD86 43A9