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Report on Meshoween 2021 network test
Note - this report is written from a Southern California perspective. Depending on your location, as they say YMMV!
During the test the node count on the linked networks locally rose to around 1,090. N2MH's N2MH-Hub saw 1428, most likely a record for an AREDN network.
Observations:
As we hoped, network storms never appeared from our West Coast point of view, and none have been reported to date. Network traffic was not substantially higher than normal. Using KN6PLV's Mesh Monitor, messages per second were averaging about 600 before the test. During the test it hovered closer to 700. Most of the increase in traffic was due to OLSR routing broadcasts, which each node has to handle.
As we expected, older devices struggled. Many wound up with a load significantly greater than 1 (which is a full load for a single-CPU device like these), indicating their CPUs were struggling to keep up with their pending processes. Ssh'ing into a few of them and running top showed that with node counts around 1,000, loads of around 4-5 were seen.
Things we didn't expect:
While the slower nodes struggled with displaying UI pages, they were usually still able to pass traffic. But occasionally that older hardware bogged down so much that it couldn't. Perhaps some effort should be made to prioritize traffic handling...
Updated date: Sunday, October 31, 2021 - 15:17
Meshoween test results
We've wrapped up the Meshoween network abuse test :-).
If you participated and have any specific observations, please pass them along to me (orv.beach@gmail.com) and they'll be rolled them into the report on the test.
tl;dr - it went pretty well - a few surprises.
Updated date: Saturday, October 30, 2021 - 20:55
Network Test Saturday, October 30th
As an AREDN network grows in size and/or complexity, it will eventually encounter a packet storm that would pretty much cripple its traffic-carrying capabilities until the storm fades out, which could be hours. (The writers of the OLSR mobile routing protocol probably never envisioned it having to handle networks of the size amateurs are creating.) This is significantly limiting the growth and performance of our networks.
Recently released nightly build 571 provides a substantial amount of resistance to these storms. As a test of the network's robustness (or not) Saturday October 30th at 9 a.m. local we'll attempt to link as many AREDN networks together as possible.
We did a 'test test' earlier in the week on the West Coast when the Southern California and Bay area networks were linked. Node counts got up to a bit over 800 and few reports were received, so we're ready for Saturday!
Test preparation
Prior to Saturday's test, it's recommended that in order to protect your node(s) that you upgrade them to the latest nightly build (599 as of this writing). This is especially important on nodes that pass data through (as opposed to being an end-point on a network).
Also prior to Saturday, establish some baseline performance measurements on your network. Suggestions are:
- Quality of VOIP phone calls
- iperf throughput...
Updated date: Thursday, October 28, 2021 - 11:22
Meshoween is in a week!
Folks, next Saturday is Meshoween, where nasty packet storms strike terror into the most experienced ham network user :-)
Seriously, we'll be linking up big and small networks to see how our ham radio networks handle huge routing table broadcasts.
If you haven't yet updated your node(s) to nightly build 571 (or later), please seriously consider doing so. It will help your node fight off any scary packet storms!
Monitoring instructions will be promulgated a day or two prior to Meshoween.
Updated date: Saturday, October 23, 2021 - 17:31
Pages
Announcements
Using AREDN Documentation
It is now easier than ever to read and save the AREDN documentation you need.
To find it, go to the blue main menu bar on the AREDNmesh home page and hover your cursor over the third item DOCS.
When the dropdown menu appears, move your cursor over the first item -- ONLINE DOCS -- and click it using the left mouse button.
A new page will appear [https://arednmesh.readthedocs.io/en/latest/] with the latest set of published documents.
At the bottom left of the page, at the bottom of the Table of Contents column, you will see Read the Docs v:latest ⯆
The v:latest ⯆ indicates that you are viewing the latest version of the documents and the ⯆ ...
Ham Radio Presentations at SCALE 17X on YouTube
The ham radio presentations from the SCALE 17X conference are now available on YouTube.
The presentations are:
1. Orv Beach, W6BI will detail that growth with emphasis on Southern California, with metrics, maps and graphs. He'll also cover some of the more significant network events, including the ability to stream video of recent brush fires from networked mountaintop webcams to YouTube.
2. Paul Wilkinson, K6IG talks about “Raspberry Pi + HAM Radio = Inexpensive repeater system”. With little effort a very powerful HAM repeater can be made with a Raspberry Pi, two HAM radios, and an internet connection. Some additional, yet inexpensive, hardware is required.
3. Ben Kuo, AI6YR presents “Linux, Raspberry PI, RTLSDR, LAME, and Open Source: A Recipe For Responding To Natural Disasters”. He covers both the why's and how's of putting together your own Raspberry Pi-based, open source system to help your own local community tap into the power of the crowdsourcing and social media emergency management.
...
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