[Commotion-discuss] Olsrd vs Babel

[sp2ong at wp.pl]

Mathieu,

Thank you very much for you comment about Babel.
We have use olsrd with local nodes with average distance about 1.5 do 3 km
between nodes.

We have some problems with throughput between nodes.

When we use typical topology like AP and WDS all working very well but we
would like use Mesh topology and we try to find best solution for local
network.
We have use WA5210G, Ubiquiti NS2 , M2 , Miktorik RB411 all with OpenWRT
with modified wireless drivers to use hamradio frequency band with channel
width 5/10 Mhz below 2.4 GHz

I have found that commotion is very nice WebGUI to configure Mesh network
but working only on new hardware.


Best regards

Waldek

2015-06-03 15:27 GMT+02:00 Mathieu Lutfy <mathieu at bidon.ca>:

> Hi,
>
> We have been using Babel for some time on the Réseau libre Montreal mesh
> network (reseaulibre.ca).
>
> We have a fork of Commotion with patches to use Babel:
> https://github.com/reseaulibre-polymtl
>
> (it's a bit out of date, but we do plan to keep using it / upgrading it)
>
> I do not have a lot of experience with OLSR to compare, but if I recall
> correctly, the main advantage of Babel is that it can support both IPv4 and
> IPv6 with a single instance / route announcement. It's also pretty easy to
> use and debug, supported by OpenWRT, Quagga, etc.
>
> Babel is also being considered for integration in Homenet:
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-mrw-homenet-rtg-comparison-02
>
> Homenet basically refers to the "Internet of Things", organically grown
> domestic networks. Devices might need to dynamically adjust the network
> paths according to the link characteristics. (vaguely quoting the above RFC
> introduction text)
>
> One interesting aspect about using Babel, IPv6 and Commotion, is that you
> can randomly generate an IPv4 /48 global-unique subnet (i.e. private
> address range similar to 192.168.x.x, but which has very strong chances of
> being unique if you inter-connect 2 networks, as we do in mesh networks).
> The mesh router can then "announce" this route on the local area network
> (using IPv6 standard Route Announcements), and all your hardware will
> automatically assign themselves an IPv6 address and be able to connect to
> the mesh. This makes the Commotion router very plug & play.
>
> A /48 subnet is huge. Typically, a /48 is used to allocate 65536 subnets
> of /64 size (a /64 being the recommended size for Route Announcements, an
> IPv6 alternative to DHCP). This is the recommended allocation for a
> residence (although some ISPs allocate a /56 instead, which is the minimum
> recommended end site assignment, and that allows 256 subnets of /64, or 16
> subnets of /60). Anyway, having many subnets is nice. If people have an
> IPv6-enabled ISP, they can announce their subnet on the mesh, and if not,
> Commotion generates a random unique-local /48.
>
> For example, I announce on the mesh the  /56 predix that my ISP assigned
> to me. I also assigned a /60 to a neighbour that is connected to my
> appartment using an ethernet cable, as well as an another /60 allocated to
> another location to whom I provide Internet via VPN via the mesh. Why a
> /60? This way they can then allocate 16 subnets of /64 as they wish (ex:
> one /64 for an access point, another /64 to their LAN, etc, and remember
> that a /64 is the recommended size for Route Announcements, an alternative
> to DHCP).
>
> Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. Back to Babel, since not everything
> supports IPv6 yet, people can still announce IPv4 in parallel, although
> that usually means chosing some obscur non-public IPv4 range to avoid
> network conflicts, probably having a wiki to document prefixes, etc (same
> as for Commotion + OLSR).
>
> Personally, since I support IPv4 to provide legacy Internet access, but I
> do not provide Internet access to everyone on the mesh, I use Tinc to
> create a VPN access to those to whom I provide Internet access. This has
> the added benefit of encrypting their Internet traffic on the mesh,
> otherwise anyone could look at the details of their browsing habits.
>
> Mathieu
>
>
> ----- Le 3 Juin 15, à 4:41, <sp2ong at wp.pl> a écrit :
>
> Hi,
> Firmware commotion use OLSRD as base protocol for mesh network.
> I have question anybody try use BABEL protocol ??? instead OLSRD
>
> http://www.pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~jch/software/babel/
>
> It will be nice to see any test comparison of use OLSRD and BABEL
>
>
> Regards
>
> Waldek
>
>
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