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| Thread ID: 68077 | 2006-04-16 08:53:00 | Which breed of Linux for a small routing box running MITRE? | unleash (6637) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 446710 | 2006-04-16 08:53:00 | Hi, I want to play around with an open source software package designed for wireless mesh networking called Mitre. Check it out at: www.mitre.org However, my plans for Mitre are to run it on wired ethernet, rather than using wireless. I want to create a network of nodes with many wired interfaces, which will detect the presence of new nodes deployed on the ends of these wires, and set themselves up. Likewise, if a node goes down, the network will heal itself, and route around. Mitre does this by sending periodic updates of devices it finds connected to the interfaces on which it's running. The network topology would consist of a grid of nodes, each connected to 3-4 other nodes by wired links on interfaces running Mitre. It's designed to run on Kernel 2.2.X, but might well work with later versions. Firstly, have I missed something obvious? Will this not work on wired Ethernet for a fundamentally obvious reason which I have missed? Secondly, what breed of Linux would you recommend I try and set this up on? The end goal is to have a physically compact node with cheap (slow) hardware, and around 5 NICs connecting the box to other nodes. I'd like a simple and reliable system. It needs nothing other than Mitre installed on it. Many thanks in advance for suggestions! |
unleash (6637) | ||
| 446711 | 2006-04-16 09:08:00 | I think you've missed something, how do you expect to make the mesh, ok - your going to have a box with 5 nics in it, I assume your going to connect to 5 PCs with it, so the box with multiple nics is acting as a switch or hub. Now if you want a true mesh then all the PCs must have the ability to connect to all the other PCs ... do you see where this is going with the wires ... yep its a mess. Wireless PCs can build a mesh because they can connect to multiple other PCs with out wires, so they can build the routing tables just by checking which other machines they can see, no wiremess. Hope that makes some sense to you. |
gcarmich (10068) | ||
| 446712 | 2006-04-16 10:06:00 | Hi, I want to play around with an open source software package designed for wireless mesh networking called Mitre. Check it out at: www.mitre.org I have looked into mesh before, specifically Zebra (www.zebra.org) on FreeBSD. I discovered it following this OnLAMP article (www.oreillynet.com). The article also contain instructions for installation, and mentions successful installations on Mandrake, Red Hat etc with kernels 2.2 and 2.4. However, my plans for Mitre are to run it on wired ethernet, rather than using wireless. I want to create a network of nodes with many wired interfaces, which will detect the presence of new nodes deployed on the ends of these wires, and set themselves up. Likewise, if a node goes down, the network will heal itself, and route around. Firstly, have I missed something obvious? Will this not work on wired Ethernet for a fundamentally obvious reason which I have missed? Secondly, what breed of Linux would you recommend I try and set this up on? The end goal is to have a physically compact node with cheap (slow) hardware, and around 5 NICs connecting the box to other nodes. I'd like a simple and reliable system. It needs nothing other than Mitre installed on it. Many thanks in advance for suggestions! I suppose you can daisy chain wired machines, but then a traditional client server network sounds a lot easier. |
vinref (6194) | ||
| 446713 | 2006-04-18 02:35:00 | It's all very weill using cheap compact nodes; you'll still have a collection of low powered computers. ;) NASA used 486 boxes for the first Beowulf cluster, and got a powerful distrubutred computer. The network connectioon was the easiest part of it; making parallel software to run on the beast was the clever bit. But I guess you are doing this for a "play" (self-educative) purpose. It doesn't have to do anything. :D I suggest that you find some old network cards; the ones which have BNC connectors for 10Base2. That way, you can have the "mesh" on one length of cable (with a terminator at eash end). If you haven't got too many nodes on it, speed loss dure to collisions won't be too bad. (10Base2 has a limit of 30 or so on one segment). You'll have the same "logical" layout: any node can "see" any other. You might be able to find a hub which would give some isolation. (That's a "multiport repeater", not a switch). |
Graham L (2) | ||
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