Wireless Mesh

Blogger may be going down

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:24:00 +0000

I got an email from the blogging company indicating that they are stop ftp blogs. Hmmm I run my blog off my own URL. It keeps everything together and now they "google" are telling me this is coming to an end.

Well, then, I guess the blog will come to an end. Really though the idea of having the blog on some cloud computer with a different URL is concerning. I just hope that they have an alternate? Maybe I will install wordpress or something.

For now, if the blog disappears then you know who is in control.

Remember Stability of the Mesh

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:40:00 +0000

Yeah, talk about getting egg on my face; I put the third mesh node and low and behold a third hardware problem. Is it my equipment now becoming old and tarnished more like rusted? Here I go back to the drawing board and will try to figure out why I lost 3 units in one location? Stability of the mesh starts with electricity, then hardware; then software or the balance of all three.

To FreeBSD Mesh or not that is the question

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:38:00 +0000

For all the people who read my blog check out the following:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/WifiMesh

Virtualized Locustworld

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:21:00 +0000

So the pundits said it couldn’t be done. I went to Locustworld website and had to go to their mirror site to download the iso disk. I used Build 25 dev 81 and was able to run it in VMware player. I had to use Linux 2.2.x to configure it and monkey around with network card setting and yes it ran. It didn’t run well but it ran. It was functional put could upload any files. I wanted to register it with WIANA but the network connection was stuck on 10.x.x.x I believe that was the VMware network. So in a pinch Locustworld could be setup to run in virtual world it would take some tweaking but it could run.

I have written on the benefits of virtualization of Locustworld. I would like to work with anyone who could take the basic setup and tweak it to the next level; however, the alternative would be to setup FreeBSD to the same thing. FreeBSD 8.0 has a built in mesh component but when you look at all the services that Locustworld has you wonder if you have the time and energy to build a similar product. Naw, but the mesh 8.0 is based on 802.11s and that great news. I know I won’t have the time to build this but if anyone is planning to fork FreeBSD in to an embedded mesh node, and then please give me a call. I would be happy to try it out and use it.

Testing Fractals

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:30:00 +0000

So from the Icicles in my enclosurer back to Fractals, I replace the NEMA 4 enclosurer with a WRAP board which is one of my older units that got hit by lightning. Other than the power supply it still works, but for how long? When I put the node up I created a perfect mesh. All nodes could mesh with each other. The differences were that some had various dbi’s between each node but some how it worked. It was really neat to see everything meshing and working together. The last time I saw this was in my lab. So to see it actually work was great. When I look at it now with using Fractals it may sense and tried to keep it working this way. I knew that this perfect mesh connection would not hold up because one of the distances from uplink node to the new node had a building, trees and was not put at the optimum height for clean Fresno effect. So I knew I would have to optimize the mesh nodes to work with each other. I left it a lone for less than 24 hours and it did start to optimize it self and again the problem occur that the link was flakey (see Stability of the Mesh.) When shape the connection of the nodes similar method I used for optimizing the mesh it became instantly rock solid. Now this is the same setup but different hardware. I not sure if the Fractals or not but it seems to fit Fractal equation. Yet again, using Fractal method gave me insight to deployment. Who knew, the wireless mesh could benefit from Fractals.

Icicles in my NEMA 4 enclosurer

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:53:00 +0000

Oh boy, talk about loosing 2 units. I have a number of NEMA enclosurer which I used to house wireless mesh node electronics. I used NEMA as it will prevent rain, ice, snow etc, from getting to the electronics. But forming icicles within the enclosurer is a first. So this is what had happened. I try to over clock the radio, may be that is not the right term, I tried to put get more power from the radio cards by setting up the software to more than the dbi maximum. Normally most cards can’t handle this and instantly burn up or stop functioning. The card I had was pcmcia from Demartech and when I ask I to put out more power, well it does. Bonus, right? Nope it runs much hotter. Now the hardware configuration in the mesh node contains a standard ati power supply (you know the type found in a pc). Well it had a fan and I thought well everything is sealed up tight no worries right? Nope, what had happen was the unit became very hot and it did not dispense the heat from the radio card as well as the CPU. The temperature became below 0 c and condensation form with in the NEMA 4 enclosurer. It then started to drip onto the motherboard and the unit stop working. When I tried to recycle (reboot) the computer I started to get the beeps from the start up of the motherboard that indicated moisture. Oops. So when I went and open the container what I found was awesome. An icicle formed from the condensation (test the NEMA in the water to see if there were any leaks, no leaks were detected.) Wow, this was a first. I thought that the enclosurer was big enough to dissipate the heat generated. I was wrong again. It took me six years to learn this one. I now find the old Wrap boards and Demartech metal enclosurer to be the best. I also observed a lot of oxidation on the radio cards. My fear is that the radio cards are becoming like a rust bucket. I may need to treat some of the components in the future for oxidation.

What is in a SSID

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:07:00 +0000

So I thought I would start the title What is in a Name but that was already done. The following is a link to funny SSID's that obviously has sexual overtones. But the Marketing side of my brain started to think and sometimes naming your wi-fi or this cause your Mesh SSID is as important. Here the link .

An SSID is also referred to as a network name because it is a name that identifies a wireless network or in our case wireless mesh. The SSID differentiates on WLAN from another, so all access points and devices attempting to connect to a specific wi-fi must use the same SSID. I use a small 3 letter abbreviation but never consider to put in a 32 character unique identifier. May be I should have spelt out my name as "superior network dont leave home with out it." Yeah that be too long, eh?

Not another Next Big Thing.

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:23:00 +0000

I’m constantly being asked what the next big thing for wireless mesh is. Well standardization is the main focus and most of new Linux distribution will have the latest component built into the OS. I like the UNIX and FreeBSD and the next release of FreeBSD® Version 8.0 focuses include wireless networking, virtualization, and storage technology. I am currently using FreeNAS for network area storage (excellent.)

802.11 wireless networking has been overhauled to add Virtual Access Points (VAP) support, which allows multiple wireless networks to be hosted from a single access point. Draft 802.11 mesh networking support allows FreeBSD-based devices to dynamically link together to create a larger wireless network. Other notable updates in FreeBSD Version 8.0 include: FreeBSD 8.0's wireless network stack is the industry leader, and makes FreeBSD the platform of choice for a future generation of networking products.

FreeBSD 8.0's network stack also offers multiprocessing optimizations: a revised link layer subsystem, per-CPU flow cache, multi-queue transmit support, and significant UDP and TCP protocol scalability improvements. Zero-copy buffer extensions to BPF improve high volume packet capture performance.

In FreeBSD 8.0, virtual machine administrators in FreeBSD's ground-breaking lightweight "Jails" can now create their own nested jails. FreeBSD now supports host and guest modes in VirtualBox, and can run as a 32-bit Xen DomU guest.

The Network File System (NFS) implementation has been enhanced with GSSAPI encryption, and also experimental NFSv4 client and server support. In addition to ZFS moving from experimental to production status, FreeBSD 8.0 introduces GPT boot support.
Yeah, so if you looking for a good OS to start to build your Wireless Mesh you may want to look at FreeBSD 8.0.

Did I just stumble upon stability of mesh

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:55:00 +0000

Most of the time I write how wonderful wireless mesh is; however, today is more of how I reached network stability by not allowing wireless mesh to automatic determine the best path to use. Since the area I have choose in a highly populated area with a gauntlet of buildings, the amount of signal reflection and the interference can lead to havoc. Specifically having wireless mesh link to two other devices and having them mesh together is founding principal regarding this technology. So here I come, I've break all the rules, I do everything that is opposite and setup a 4 hop dog leg preventing wireless mesh to have only a single path to the Internet. What happen was simply magical. Network stability. The nodes seems very stable and performance has improved tremendously. Throughput of the signal is laser fast, such that maintain a constant speed.

OK, so how did this happen? I have a 3 hop dog leg. At the end of the dog leg one of my node tries to connect with the up link node. What happens is the last node can't find the path to the Internet. It keeps searching. So to stop the searching I removed the redundancy of the network path. I took the strongest signal that is consistent over time between the nodes. This worked.

Next I added another node to the system; this node had the ability to reduce the hopes by providing and alternative path to the gateway. What happened was an nodes became confused to which was the best path. In a moment of time the new node had the strongest signal then it would loose it and another node would then have a better signal to the gateway.

Enough I said. So I stop the flaky connections and identify the strongest signals, over time, between nodes. I then set the "blocknode" command in WIANA to ensure that the nodes would not connect to each other. What this produced was a single path to the gateway.

How I determine the strongest signal was I check "reporter" on each node and determine which had the strongest connection such that
Node B: had two connection node C and node D (this node a weaker signal)
Node C: had a strong connection to B and D
Node D: had equally strong signal to both B and C

I figure B to D was flaky and block them from communicating like wise Node C always was trying to connect to the Up link node called node A. So I block C from connecting to Node A, thus Node A connected only to node B
B connected with C
and C connect only with D i.e.
A to B to C to D

A to D is stable.

I now call this a structured Mesh. Not allowing the software to determine which is the best path is a break through. The idea came from watching a show on fractals. The largest segment is from A to B. Next B to C and finally C to D. B to D would seem faster avoiding C but the length of connection between the two was actually slower, Such that the further you go between connection the slower the connection. OK, I got lucky.

The fractal of B, if it had a redudant path to the up link nodes, such that it had a choice between up links then the would had to be the same for nodes C and D. They two should have an alternate route. It just make sense. Why have a redudant route in C and D where either A or B was not redudant? Thus C and D was looking for a redudant path.

There is no different in the risk node failure because of this. If main branch is not redudant then why should the outer branches be redudant?

Network stability not by using wireless mesh but by using fractal.

Oh performance is excellent.

I very impressed that 4 hops out can play video with no jitter.

Final thought is I have one arm radiating out now to add a second arm.

Wireless Mesh for Earth to Space

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:06:00 +0000

So I had laughed so hard that I started to snort, this is how my wife describe my description of space elevator challenge. I saw some earlier results and was laughing at the results. But it got me thinking and I stopped laughing and started to do some research and read other people research.

First check out the Nova video on this solution. You can see the competition for building a space elevator prototype is getting narrow and competitor are being lead by a bunch of kids out of the University of Saskatchewan. The whole concept is a ribbon made out of carbon tubes are sent from a satellite orbiting, and a free electron laser is pointed at this solar collector that provides the power to run an electric motor up this ribbon of carbon tube toward the satellite, hence Arthur C. Scott’s vision of space elevator. The fun part is that the people that are competiting are gaining great knowledge in developing this technology and are becoming the experts. This is a great idea.

But what got me excited and thinking was the laser power, solar collectors system that they would use to propel the craft. It used a laser beam that focuses its energy onto the solar panels. The panels would convert the light to electricity and system would not need any batteries. If you have seen my solar panel experiments running a wireless mesh node you can see where I’m going with this. Well basically a wireless mesh node that is power by laser. But my thinking took me a step further the laser would also be used to provide communication. The laser would be equipped with Free Space Optics (FSO.) So it would not only provide the energy through a narrow beam of light it also would provide gigabits of bandwidth communication, such that point to point. It is similar to Ethernet over Power line, where Ethernet signal is used in conjunction with the power line to provide both power and communication but without any infrastructure between the two devices.

But we have seen with laser in the past that when they are used for communication such as Free Space Optics that they are susceptible due to weather conditions. For terrestrial applications, the principal limiting factors are:

Beam dispersion
Atmospheric absorption
Rain
Fog (10..~100 dB/km attenuation)
Snow
Background light
Pointing stability in wind
Pollution / smog

If the sun goes exactly behind the transmitter, it can swamp the signal.
These factors cause an attenuated receiver signal and lead to higher bit error ratio (BER). To overcome these issues, vendors found some solutions, like multi-beam or multi-path architectures, which use more than one sender and more than one receiver. Some state-of-the-art devices also have larger fade margin (extra power, reserved for rain, smog, fog). To keep an eye-safe environment, good FSO systems have a limited laser power density and support laser classes 1 or 1M. Atmospheric and fog attenuation, which are exponential in nature, limit practical range of FSO devices to several kilometres; but and this is a big but, the space elevator to get around this problem will utilize a free electron laser. Now doing some research on this the laser would be targeting a single object that is moving in a straight line. Tracking this objects and keeping the solar panel align with the beam has already been invented.

Wow you can theoretically use this laser through any of the terrestrial conditions fore mentioned. This has already been examined NASA-DOE reference design of the ‘70s Koomanoff and Bloomquist, 1998. I think it was referred to PV-driven cloud-penetrating microwave beamers. Now this is what I talking about, laser that can penetrate terrestrial conditions. FSO commercial applications are focused on providing the most inexpensive product that they can. They should have been focus on producing the best quality product and to me quality is PV-driven cloud-penetrating microwave beamers (CPMB.) Imagine using these technologies together call it Ethernet over Laser (EoL.)

We implement wireless mesh using 802.11b in the past it follows a typical wireless distribution; however, having the ability to interconnect nodes that are in range. The uplink nodes or nodes that connected to internet or internet backbone provide initial protocols so that mesh nodes can communicate with each other and thus providing framework to create a mesh cloud. Now substituting the uplink Ethernet with FSO utilizing CPMB may provide the infrastructure not only provides backbone but the energy to run the mesh node. It could also be the communication device that the space elevator may use. Or it can give the wireless mesh the ability to go to a low orbit satellite power by upward facing CPMB.

Distributing the CPMB to other nodes would be difficult because today’s solar panels are not that efficient. This would be similar to an electric car driving down the high way having an electric turbine generating its electricity. Eventually the car will stop. I’m thinking that each step of the CPMB would have a power loss say “efficiency of the initial solar panel – the power that it would run the mesh node – Transmitter laser going to the next node or back to the original node.” Yeah, a lot of loss but depending on the solar collectors it may have enough power to distribute to two other mesh nodes. If efficiency of the solar collectors can be increase and the redistribution of the excess laser beam can be tapped and redirected to other nodes. A viable solution can be made for communication.

If this solution can be made for communication it can be made for other solutions. The University of Michigan has broken a record with a 1.3-micron speck wide laser. Weighing in at a mere 20 billion trillion watts per square centimeter and containing a measly 300 terawatts of power, It’s about two orders of magnitude higher than any other laser in the world and can perform for 30 femtoseconds once every ten seconds— some of the researchers speculate it is the most powerful laser in the universe. Can you imagine if this thing could run continuously it would be able to power everything?

This technology could be that turn point that we have all been looking for a laser that could power your home, your transportation and provide you with communications. But lets take these baby steps first; the future is bright. I will be watching the space elevator competition. It has the components of changing the world. Who would of thought that space elevator competition could be the catalyst in identify new technology that could provide communication and power through a beam of light.

Update on long term use of Mesh Hardware

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:20:00 +0000

Like the title says we are into year six of the mesh network and some units are now retired. Here are some long term problems:

Via EPIA board melted RAM and RAM holder. Looks like the RAM had corrosion and it melted a bit of the RAM as well as the motherboard. It was located outside in a NEMA 4 enclosure. Small vent hole was used for wiring and did not prevent air was able to penetrate the interior environment. Not a good thing.

Second Morex power supply, located indoor unit running Via EPIA stop working. No idea why it just doesn't work. Second Morex power supply also went on an indoor unit. May be problems with dirty power or just stop working. Not good either.

So far regular PC power supply seem to be long lasting; however, the small fan-less power supply seems to be holding up in extreme conditions.

Intel Mini-itx motherboard that I have written about is now acting funny. I remove any switches such power on or resets so that the unit would be continuously on. This has been running fine but now it wants to have a manual switch to turn the damn thing back on again. Not sure if something has corrupted in the Bios or just the board is breaking down. It too located in NEMA enclosure however with no air coming from the outside.

WRAP boards from PC engine have taken a beating from the Canadian elements. These boards on located outside and are in metal enclosures with outside air circulation. I have seen rusting on the radio cards but the boards still are working fine.

That's all for now.

Almost a thousand

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:09:00 +0000

In less than a months, I received almost a thousand hits on most recent article How to build your own quadruple play.

Quadruple Play

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:36:00 +0000

Well if you ever wanted to provide IPTV similar to a cable company in your mesh you have to read my latest article http://www.moskaluk.com/how_to_build_your_own_quadruple_.htm

Oh those failures

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:31:00 +0000

It is now over 5 years since I have put together locustworld network and it is still running. I'm now seeing long term effects on the hardware I picked. The Via boards with FANs are showing spikes in there CPU temperature. Now it great that Via has these sensors and locustworld has used them with its statistic package. But for me either I go and fix each of these units or simply replaced them. Moving parts on your nodes is not a good thing.

Contact using LinkedIN.com

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:26:00 +0000

A few of you have linked with me using linkedIN.com Just want to say your welcome! Don

One response

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:25:00 +0000

Nope I need more responses. Find your favorite wireless mesh blog entry add your comment. Either you like it, or you have a different view, or you want me to stop or what ever you want to comment on, I will accept. The only statistic I have is how many hits I get on these websites. I don't ask for names, or location but it would help me know how you feel.

Hopefully I asking, no begging you please interact. I need add least 50 responses to this blog. Can you help?

Thanks

Don

How to on Open 802.11S

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:29:00 +0000

For everyone that is interested check out Open802.11s org how to pages. Just for review this version is available on newest linux kernel.

New Generation of Wireless Mesh

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:17:00 +0000

In September is it will be five years working on Locustworld's wireless mesh using AODV.

On the wireless front, the new kernel includes support for 802.11s, the draft standard for wireless mesh networking. With mesh networking each node on the network acts a relay for each other, promising higher redundancy and better throughput.

This new generation of wireless mesh will be available for all distro of Linux. Does this mean another five years of experimentation?

OK so I said to myself over 200 blog entries on wireless mesh is enough, eh?

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:16:00 +0000

Over two hundred blog entries on Wireless Mesh. Ok maybe I aint the best writer in the world and I only have under 10,000 of you guys and gals reading this per month with no response. None what so ever. I promised myself that I would slow down and let everyone have a chance to read but some of my work is already dated. So I am going back to add a paragraph here and word there and maybe even think of publishing some of this wireless mesh articles.

I've just updated my most popular article Wireless Mesh Topology. I can say that after 4 years there is over 100,000 unique ip address that have hit this page. It is linked to many websites and once was put into wikipedia as an external link (now gone.) It is for that reason that I started to update a few of the articles.

Sincerely,

Don Moskaluk

Array-AP

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:50:00 +0000

Finally after 5 years of prototyping and testing I've put a winning combination together! This industrial open hardware device can run as an access point or wireless mesh cluster.

Moskaluk Array-AP comes with VIA Eden-V4 processors with speeds of 1GHz using a 400MHz front size bus and a DDR2 SO-DIMM socket accommodating up to 1GB memory & 4 GB or more of HD, offering 18-20% increased network performance levels when compared with VIA Eden-based appliances. The unit does not require any active cooling, offering much higher reliability and longer life span compared with existing network platforms.

The four Ethernet connections can connect to the Internet using an Ethernet connection and can be linked to other application sources linked servers or other radio devices. At one point I was thinking to remove the radio card out of the device and only have a firmware control the other radio devices; however, I saw that a basic Wi-Fi device was needed. I’m not sure if I will be offering various radio cards but the device uses mini-PCI cards and is flexible to modify.

Evolving to the Next Level

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:42:00 +0000

When I build a prototype I normally don’t “wow” myself until I build the Array-AP. Not only did I meet my expectations I exceeded them to possibly creating the next generation of Internet using a wireless mesh. When you look at the new Array-AP it doesn’t appear to be different other than any other MeshAP other than the 1u rack mount option. In fact the pundits would say it is just an embedded system with a 802.11b radio card and 4 Ethernet ports and at the price of $600 - $800 US it better do something else then simply route using wireless mesh. They would also say that because this is an industrial solution that this in itself would exceed any commercial-off-the-shelf wireless AP. But when you design hardware to meet Municipal standards you shouldn’t be building components using PC type equipment. The fact that most Muni AP routers will be continuously on needs specialized industrial embedded hardware. But Array-AP’s unique combination of Wireless Mesh, Virtualization, Supercomputer, and by also providing Software as a Service (SaaS) it starts to turn heads. The combination is called MVSS.

The physical hardware on Array-AP will meet or exceed many expectations regarding a wireless mesh. The single 802.11b (Prism chipset) radio card will not turn a single head when 802.11N is the new standard. Having a single radio card in the unit will not make this compete with the likes of units that can handle up to 8 different radio cards. The idea for a single radio card is to use that radio card to access the service solution. Traditional AODV routing will be done with a combination of aggregation or clustering using MeshAP, wireless Bridge, Free Space Optics, Fibre Optics, or other types of Metropolitan backbone technology either in licensed or unlicensed operation. That means your wired or wireless mesh can exceed 1 Gbps.

The Array-AP limitations are 100BT Ethernet ports and a single 802.11B radio card. What on earth was I thinking when I built this unit? Well the solution was to build a wired router using Locustworld v1311. So I did I built a 2 Ethernet port MeshAP with an 802.11B radio card. I basically replaced my current off the shelf wireless router with this unit and I found tremendous benefit when integrating wireless mesh right down to the injection level. Quality of Service (QoS) improves the Telephony operation as well as the IPTV operations. QoS is now at the edge of the service application support for wireless mesh. This becomes the ultimate for triple or quadruple play network environments.

The Array-AP starts to stand out not only from a physical construction but also from configuration. Most wireless MeshAP’s is built with less than 500 MHz and 64 Megs of RAM and disk space. Because of their small footprint they can easily be embedded into different hardware such as PC Engine or Via Mini-ITX boards. The Array-AP runs at 1 GHz and has over 4 Gig of disk space and 1 Gig of ram. This is truly unique solid-state construction.

The idea came to me based on the CERN supercomputer and utilizing VMware to provide other application services within a Wireless Mesh router. The problem is that many people require faster “Last Mile” networking, meaning that people want faster Internet connections. What CERN did was to combine High Performance Clustering (HPC) with a dedicated network. The access to this super computer did not require more than a dial connection because the supercomputer was being accessed with X windows. Ok, so if you have 100 to 1000 of the Array-APs you can start utilizing the access computing to build the same network mesh network giving your client the ability to utilize the entire mesh array as one big computer hence the name Array-AP. I figure if you are building out ISP you might as well build out the next generation of Internet.

I believe that this should be a plug and play type scenario. Once you have decided on your operation that deploying it should be as easy as plugging it in and watching your MVSS grow.

The neat idea about integrating a supercomputer into a wireless mesh access point is that as the technology comes and goes it can be utilized from the basic dialup internet connection to the latest technology offering. To see more of the Array-AP please see Going to the Next Level.

Bubble Deployment

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:32:00 +0000

Fixing the Muni Wireless Mesh is not going to be any small order. As early adopters many Muni Wireless Mesh have fallen short to providing complete coverage and operations. These deployments range for bad design to problem equipment and everything in between. Most situations can fix by either adding more or rearranging the deployment. Developing new best practices can help for wireless mesh deployment can help municipalities to fix and finish there deployments. One of the unique solutions to fix a Muni Wireless Mesh is to deploy the mesh bubble in small section in and around an area. Bubble deployment is more of a prototype phase. Deploying the wireless mesh in a community and figuring out the problems prior to deploying it as an end state solution would be with in best practices of any Project Management methodology. This best practice was some how forgotten in the wireless mesh deployment. Wireless Mesh has a bloody nose but the bleeding will eventually be stopped.

Innovative solutions for network optimization and internet acceleration

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:50:00 +0000

Ok so I read an article that was new and innovative. I then went out and research it and found more information. I then thought wow this is the next generation of the internet. The first thing is how to put a business model together then I remember a commercial on TV regarding snow boarders. The gist of the commercial was "we weren’t just making a snow board we were inventing a new sport." Similar to this the person was not inventing anything new but putting together a new solution that created an awesome new way to deliver the new internet.

Now just to recap back in the early Ninety’s most people got access to the internet via a dial up 56Kbps connection, and for business and governments there were offering from Frame Relay, T1, and other commercial offering. The brought the speed to roughly 1.5 MBPS and the backbone was roughly 100 MBPS.

Now the internet has involved in terms of service offering bring larger bandwidths in Toronto Dial UP still prevails however it has been overtaken by DSL and Cable connections. Business our still relied on Frame Relay, T1, OC3, Dark Fibre any where from 1.5 all the way up to 40 GBPS or higher.

Now with today’s current technology CERN has come up with a network and servers speed that can be measured in Petaflop. A Petaflop is a measure of a computer's processing speed and can be expressed as a thousand trillion floating point operations per second. FLOPS are floating-point operations per second. Floating-point is considered to be a method of encoding real numbers within the limits of finite precision available on computers. Using floating-point encoding, extremely long numbers can be handled relatively easily.

So I hope that you are still with me regarding Petaflop. Petaflop is a huge number and we are still dealing with dialup connections with Internet. Today we are always looking for greater bandwidth to download or to capture information in order that our computers can process it. The architecture is either 2 tiers or 3 tiers. We always need more bandwidth grow because we our CPU are growing in our computers. As computer power increase so does the delivery system to the internet. But that is the way it is.

Now back to the guys from CERN. Well they built a supercomputer and use fibre network to connect the entire cluster computer estimated to be at 250,000 computer world wide to produce these speeds. The combination of all these computers and the dedicated fibre optic networks produces these types of speeds and the system itself. There isn’t a name for combining the internet and cluster computers to provide this type of unique service! So her goes I’ll name it Clustered Computer with Integrated Network or CCIN.

I read in one of the articles that all that is required to access this system is a simple 56K dialup line. Since the client doesn’t need CPU at it machine to process all you need is a monitor and input devices like speakers, keyboard and mouse and you have access Petaflop worth of computing power? But before you start jumping up and down the concept of the internet acts more like a mainframe than a PC. Your data is shared. So in laymen’s terms those MP3 wouldn’t be coming down the pipe anytime soon. You could only access them through your device. Basically the information is shared. What it sound like is that you would use X window technology to gain access to it. So will the next big thing be a whole bunch of X window appliances?

No, it gets better than this. So I figure hey with 802.11B you could have a lot of X windows devices running off a clustered of Linux boxes. So instead of everyone trying to download the latest jazz album maybe giving them access to a supercomputer would be better. So it doesn’t mater where you are all you need to get is an X window environment. That means you would give them Software as a Service. That means you could give them unlimited types of software to run and access. But the greatest part is the 802.11B Wi-Fi connection is all you ever going to need. (I laugh at myself at that last statement because it sure sound like Bill Gates saying that all you every going to need is 640 k.) No I think that was too much 56 kbps for should be enough for the next ten years.

But wait this gets much better. So before you go out and start building a supercomputer and offering services I figure I go and research if any companies are doing this. Sure enough my idea is not unique and that some companies are trying to do the same thing. Have a quick read on this service http://www.arteraturbo.com/main.asp?Nav_Bar=15 should we be building supercomputer for the wireless mesh? Yeah I think so!

So can you read the headline Wireless Mesh Speed break world record and exceed Petaflop speeds. Yeah having access to a supercomputer be neat what be better if you were mobile and had access to a supercomputer. Now I can see everyone going out and Googling HPC cluster open and viola they find the Rock.

I can hear my buddy from Vancouver say “Long Live Beowulf” (sort of inside joke that a movie was called Bewoulf and the first single system image has the same name.)

It just another form of Control

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:05:00 +0000

Traffic shaping also known as "packet shaping" is an attempt to control computer network traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, lower latency, and/or increase usable bandwidth by delaying packets that meet a certain criteria. Using Locustworld, traffic shaping is any action on a set of packets which imposes additional delay on those packets such that they conform to some predetermined constraint a contract or traffic profile.

Traffic shaping provides a means to control the volume of traffic being sent into a network in a specified period using bandwidth throttling, or the maximum rate at which the traffic is sent which rate is limiting. This control can be accomplished in many ways and for many reasons; however traffic shaping is always achieved by delaying packets. Traffic shaping is commonly applied at the network edges to control traffic entering the network, but can also be applied by the traffic source for example, computer or network card or by an element in the network.

Traffic policing is the distinct but related practice of packet dropping and packet marking. An example of why you want to utilize traffic shaping is providing Quality of Service (QoS.) My recent focus and interest has been improving and providing carrier class wireless network. This is partly motivated by a requirement for an Internet Protocol Quality of Service (IP QoS) solution to allow us to converge our video, voice and data networks with in the Mesh Network.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has been asked to investigate the impact of "traffic shaping" by Internet service providers (ISPs) on Canadian Internet users. http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?id=82157&issue=03312008

Simply put one must utilize a form of control if the goal is to provide QoS for streaming media then it is required on a share network; however, when traffic shaping is utilize to restrict the usage for non QoS application and it is utilized for non QoS but for bandwidth control then these practices and the implications for consumers should be advised appropriately. Since this practice has been utilized for years it important not to debate on traffic shaping but to debate how the consumer or client is affected by such controls. It’s funny how when you subscribe to a service for years, how the service evolves to the point that general consumers are impacted.

Doctor, Doctor

noreply@blogger.com (Don Moskaluk) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:21:00 +0000

Yes Hello,

-Our plan was to bring Wi-Fi to the city using wireless mesh and we have run out of money.

What happened?

-Well we we're sure and we put to tender and RFP that we awarded. When it came to implementing we wanted to be sure that we could managed this and ensure that our customers would get the best possible service.

Then what happened?

-Well, we started to deploy and we ran into some problems.

What type of problems?

-Well we couldn't get the coverage and the bandwidth to all the people so we need to buy more equipment.

So how much did you originally budgeted for?

-We went with the lowest bidder and we ensure that we follow ITIL methodology.

Hmmm, I see and now?

-Can you help?

Did you use best practice prior to deployment?

-No?

Oh so you are paying not only for best practices but to build out a wireless mesh?

-I'm not following?

So the cost to have all the right practices far out weighed the cost of deployment?

-I suppose so.

Hmmm.

-What does that mean?

Is your Wi-Fi working today?

-Yes it great but it's like TV all those channels and nothing on. But Doctor what about the cost to deploy the remaining network.

If it is working today are you starting to see a return on investment?

Not yet.

Why do you want to continue this path?

Because this is the methodology we deployed and we can't change it now