News from the Reseau Libre (Montreal's mesh net) : no more Batman
This happened a few months ago but we were still experimenting. However now it seems pretty definitive: We've dropped BATMAN, and are instead using Babel.
I've heard they are different layer protocols, but we really just don't need BATMAN now that we're using Babel. We just want to get those packets home, anything else is a luxury. And since we want to make the mesh net as accessible as possible, we can't have people installing software they don't fundamentally need.
Mesh news isn't super centralized, I don't know if others plan to use BATMAN again at some point, but for now it seems like everyone's happy to just use Babel.
Also, we now have 42 up nodes: http://i.imgur.com/cqbyE84h.png (although 1 or 2 of those are access points, which generally aren't on the "backbone").
Here's a map of how that looks: http://i.imgur.com/2qZ73A4h.png
(I would link, but the site is on a home connection, please don't hug us to death.)
I myself just started having a functional link recently, so I'm bursting with motivation again. I'm again happy to answer any questions. Preemptive answer: Most of us use Bullet M2s for nodes, some use Nanostations.
Posted Feb 9, 2013, 7:53 PM UTC
I just recently installed my bullet on my roof in -20° celcius and am officially part of ReseauLibre!
You're drunk Ben, go home :P
Looks like you've got some flat-ish topography & can see a good distance, how many other nodes can ya see?
Just 1 node unfortunately... we did data transfer test and get 1000
mbpskbps between the two of us.. so although it's not great, it is a network!1000mbps? Do you mean kbps?
One big choice we made at the outset of building the network here in Seattle was to use 5ghz & very directional radios when possible, since the goal isn't to build a slow network that competes with wifi, hence why we've been using a fair number of Omnitiks and Nanostation M5 radios.
uh wait... kbps that is :P 150kBps approx.
Do you have a link with details on the Seattle network? I'm curious to see information about your setup.
I don't disagree that directional is better when possible, it's just more expensive, way more if it's 2 radios per link. We do have some directional antennas for very long links, but since no one wants to spend 500$ on any single relay, most of us figure we might as well have an omni antenna and wait for peers to pop up close by.