[Battlemesh] Thanks for the v5 ;-)

Gabriel Kerneis kerneis at pps.jussieu.fr
Tue Apr 3 18:03:22 CEST 2012


On Tue, Apr 03, 2012 at 02:17:21PM +0800, Yeoh Chun-Yeow wrote:
> I think that we need to ensure our binary images ready before the
> event. Off course, we need identify the hardware platform earlier.

Sadly, this is hardly surprising.  For instance, six months ago, on this
mailing-list:

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 02:20:52PM +0200, Pau wrote:
> 2011/9/22 Marek Lindner <lindner_marek at yahoo.de>
> > On Thursday, September 22, 2011 06:52:22 Andrew Parnell wrote:
> > > One thing I would like to suggest is to have a more formalised arrangement
> > > for the test network that we will use for WBMv5.  Though I am a newcomer
> > > to this, one thing that I couldn't help but notice was that many of us
> > > were there for 5-6 days before we were actually deploying the Foneras and
> > > building a test mesh.  It seems that this is not the most efficient use of
> > > our time.  Perhaps we could find a way to require that each team/group who
> > > wishes to submit code for testing must have this ready to go /before/ the
> > > event begins.  This way, a firmware image can be prepared in advance, and
> > > once people begin to arrive, we can set up the mesh immediately and have
> > > much more time for testing.  We would probably also want to have another
> > > deadline(s) sometime in the middle of the event perhaps, where updates can
> > > be provided and a new firmware image(s) compiled.  Hopefully this would
> > > allow us to use the short time we have to the maximum benefit, and we
> > > could really get some good tests/statistics compiled as a result.
> >
> > It is not that we did not try in the past. We had deadlines / teams / etc
> > but clearly lacked direction imposed by a "test leader" or "test group". The
> > misery starts when you ask the question: What are we going to test ? You
> > will find people chiming in that are fairly silent most of the time but feel
> > they have to "defend" their protocol.  In short: As long as we don't have
> > someone (preferrably a protocol neutral person) who takes matters into his
> > hands I don't expect any improvement this year either.
> >
> I'm also a newcomer at WBM, the last one was my first one. Before I went
> there, I thought that this was an event where the main objective was to test
> mesh protocols and put them in battle. But after, my thought was that this
> is an event to meet people and speak about some geek topics.
> For me that is good, but maybe to push the original objective a little more
> would be nice.
> One of the main restrictions I found is the hardware. Fonera is a very
> limited device and when you are running 4 or 5 protocols, it can do some
> strange things, and the tests become unreliable. Maybe we should put some
> efforts in to have another kind of hardware, we can find some sponsors who
> can give us some hardware. Or maybe we can put a special tax for spending on
> hardware (10€ per person = 600€ = 10 new devices).

Proposing and discussing some test scenarios in advance is definitely an
improvement, but it turned out to be useless without a reliable mesh setup to
perform the actual measurements.

-- 
Gabriel



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