ORBIT-USER: BSSID/CELL issues in ad-hoc mode

[Einar Vollset]

..and as a further thing to try (desperate times, etc..): Have you  
had a look at what commands iwpriv gives you on the
devices? Maybe there's something exposed there?

Cheers,

Einar


On Aug 23, 2006, at 5:39 PM, Einar Vollset wrote:

>
>
> How quickly are you bringing up each node? I had the same problems  
> with only 5 nodes on the grid
> when configuring them all at the same time, like so:
>
> for x in `echo $xcoords`
> do
> for y in `echo $ycoords`
> do
>   ssh root at node$x-$y modprobe ath_pci &
>   ssh root at node$x-$y ifconfig ath0 down  &
>   ssh root at node$x-$y wlanconfig ath0 destroy &
>   ssh root at node$x-$y wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode  
> adhoc &
>   ssh root at node$x-$y iwconfig ath0 essid einarnet &
>   ssh root at node$x-$y iwconfig ath0 rate 5.5M &
>   ssh root at node$x-$y ifconfig ath0 192.168.$x.$y up &
>   echo "Configured node$x-$y"
> done
> done
>
> ..but bringing them up one by one worked (so far anyways):
>
> for x in `echo $xcoords`
> do
> for y in `echo $ycoords`
> do
>   ssh root at node$x-$y modprobe ath_pci &&
>   ssh root at node$x-$y ifconfig ath0 down  &&
>   ssh root at node$x-$y wlanconfig ath0 destroy &&
>   ssh root at node$x-$y wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode  
> adhoc &&
>   ssh root at node$x-$y iwconfig ath0 essid einarnet &&
>   ssh root at node$x-$y iwconfig ath0 rate 5.5M &&
>   ssh root at node$x-$y ifconfig ath0 192.168.$x.$y up &&
>   echo "Configured node$x-$y"
> done
> done
>
> ..This is with madwifi-0.9.2 (which may or may not be what's on by  
> default. Easy to install though)
>
>
> The only way I found to set BSSIDs (this is for madwifi drivers),  
> is with the devices in AP mode:
> iwconfig ath0 ap 00:00:00:00:00:00, etc. Perhaps you could do  
> something like setup one AP, bring up everyone
> else as a STA, Destroy the AP and then switch to Ad-Hoc? Pretty  
> hacky, and probably wouldn't work..
>
> As an aside - it's interesting how little google knows about this -  
> suggests that large scale ad-hoc network
> experimentation is rather uncommon.. :-)
>
>
> p.s. I'd like to take a look at your tools if you wouldn't mind?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Einar
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 23, 2006, at 5:22 PM, Sachin Ganu wrote:
>
>> Hi Chris,
>> I believe this functionality for Atheros is embedded in the HAL
>> somewhere. In other words, this now gets us into the wireless driver
>> domain (outside of ORBIT's control, unfortunately :-)
>>
>> If you are using ad-hoc mode, depending on how it is implemented, the
>> responsibility of cell formation and maintenance is distributed and
>> clearly there are some synchronization problems when the number of
>> nodes goes up.. Hence, some of them start to create their own BSSID's
>> for the same ESSID.
>>
>> .no solution yet...hence only commiserations. :-)
>>
>> -Sachin
>>
>> On 8/23/06, chris at orderonenetworks.com  
>> <chris at orderonenetworks.com> wrote:
>>> I'm hoping someone can help.
>>>
>>> I've got most of the grid fired up and have huge problems with  
>>> the radio's
>>> coming up with their own CELL/BSSID numbers and then changing  
>>> them about
>>> every 5 secs or so. This means that I am basically unable to build a
>>> network in the grid. Sandbox nodes have no such problems - most  
>>> likely
>>> this is a size related issue.
>>>
>>> Is there anyway to manually set the CELL/BSSID, or have the cards  
>>> ignore
>>> this value so it doesn't matter?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Chris
>>>
>>>
>