[Commotion-discuss] distribution of load among gateways and speed gains?

[Dan Staples]

Hi John,

As it currently works, OLSRd (the routing program we use) has a
SmartGateway plugin to distribute gateways to the mesh. Unfortunately,
the way this plugin works is to tell a node to use the nearest gateway
it can find, without regard to the capacity or latency of that gateway
compared to others. So, if my node is 1 hop away from a slow gateway and
2 hops away from a fast gateway, it will always choose the slow gateway
(assuming link quality is relatively homogeneous). Bummer, I know.

The good news is that, if I recall correctly, version 2 of OLSRd has a
much smarter way of choosing gateways, that does in fact take into
account gateway characteristics. So once we move to OSLRd version 2,
that problem will hopefully be alleviated.

But for now, we'll have to work around that limitation.

hope that helps!

Dan

On 05/26/2014 10:27 AM, john coleman wrote:
>     Our neighborhood mesh is small but growing steadily.  We have
> gateways on the mesh that vary by about 10 fold in speed.  Can someone
> explain if and how the commotion mesh distributes load between the
> gateways and if those linked to the wireless routers on the slow
> gateways can expect any speed increase because of the distributed load?
>     Using common speed test websites (www.speedtest.net and
> www.bandwidthplace.com) I see no gain in speed by being linked to the
> mesh. However, I am unsure if those types of speed tests are appropriate
> for a mesh network.
>     When a gateway goes down, the attached node switches to another
> gateway to access the internet, as it should. But I can't see evidence
> that nodes attached to slow gateways receive speed benefits by having
> fast gateways on the mesh.  Any insights or pointers to, not too
> technical, documentation?
> thanks,
> john
> p.s. using
> PicoStation M2-HPs  running grumpy cat 1.1rc1
> 
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-- 
Dan Staples

Open Technology Institute
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