Forgot to share the link - https://github.com/mwarning/meshnet-lab/
------ Original Message ------
From "Valent@MeshPoint" <[email protected]>
To "Juliusz Chroboczek" <[email protected]>
Cc [email protected]
Date 20.12.2025. 23:35:01
Subject Re[2]: [Babel-users] Restarting MeshPoint – seeking advice on
routing for crisis/disaster scenarios
>Hello Juliusz,
>
>Good to hear from you again, and thanks for the detailed reply.
>
>I agree on cellular changing the landscape a lot. In practice, in
deployments I have seen and worked with, cellular is often overloaded,
intentionally restricted, or simply unavailable exactly when ad hoc
connectivity is needed most. That is why I still look at mesh as a
complementary tool rather than a replacement for cellular.
>
>On jamming and mixed link types, I am fully aligned with your point.
From a practical networking perspective, this is where layer 3 really
shines. If links are abstracted properly, the routing protocol should
not care whether the next hop is WiFi, Ethernet, or something more
exotic. In the field, mixed setups often survive precisely because not
everything fails at the same time.
>
>Regarding seamless mobility, thanks for pointing me to sroamd. I
actually was not aware of it before your email. Conceptually, layer 3
mobility makes a lot of sense to me, especially from an operational
standpoint. In community and emergency networks I have worked with,
large layer 2 domains tend to look good in small tests, but become
fragile once you have real users, real traffic, and imperfect links.
>
>On the large scale behaviour question, I mean this in a very
pragmatic way. Many community and emergency style networks are sparse,
asymmetric, and power constrained. Nodes come and go, links flap, and
you often end up with long chains rather than dense meshes. The
challenge is keeping control plane traffic bounded and predictable so
that routing does not end up consuming most of the airtime or CPU as
you scale into the hundreds or thousands of nodes.
>
>To keep this grounded in reality, I have been testing in a lab setup
that tries to resemble real community networks as closely as possible.
I am using meshnet lab to spin up large topologies based on real
Freifunk network graphs, rather than synthetic grids or random meshes.
This allows comparing behaviour on the same realistic topologies and
then sanity checking the results on actual hardware in smaller setups.
Have you, or anyone else on the list, worked with meshnet lab before?
I would be interested to hear how well it matched real world behaviour
in your experience.
>
>I also wanted to ask one more general question about Babel itself,
more about process than implementation details. When you first started
developing Babel, was it driven mainly by theoretical reasoning at the
beginning, with real world testing coming later, or were simulators,
lab setups, or live networks involved from early on? Or was it always
a mix of both. I am asking from an operator perspective, since in my
experience many issues only show up once you put protocols into messy,
real topologies.
>
>Best regards,
>Valent
>
>
>------ Original Message ------
>From "Juliusz Chroboczek" <[email protected]>
>To "Valent Turkovic" <[email protected]>
>Cc [email protected]
>Date 18.12.2025. 1:04:43
>Subject Re: [Babel-users] Restarting MeshPoint – seeking advice on
routing for crisis/disaster scenarios
>
>>Hello, Valent, good to hear from you again.
>>
>>> Between 2015 and 2018 I ran the MeshPoint project – a simple,
rugged
>>> Wi-Fi hotspot designed to work in the toughest conditions.
>>
>>I remember :-)
>>
>>> Unfortunately, financial issues forced me to pause the project
after 2018
>>
>>In addition to the issues you mention, the big change since the
early
>>2000s is the wide availability of cheap cellular connectivity.
Hence, the
>>demand for mesh networks has changed quite a bit.
>>
>>> I know that in active conflict zones Wi-Fi can be jammed
>>
>>The nice thing about having a layer 3 routing protocol is that you
can
>>combine technologies: Babel is designed to handle a network that has
both
>>wired and wireless links, and that uses multiple wireless
technologies at
>>the same time (WiFi at various frequencies, UWB, infrared laser,
etc.).
>>In such a network, Babel should be able to find a path consisting of
>>whichever links are not jammed at a given time.
>>
>>Of course, this assumes that the opponent is not able to jam all
links
>>simultaneously.
>>
>>> - BATMAN-adv-style seamless mobility
>>
>>I started working on sroamd[1], which implements seamless mobility
at
>>layer 3, but then Covid happened, and I got interested in
>>videoconferencing. I guess we could revive it if there's interest.
>>
>>[1]: https://github.com/jech/sroamd
>>
>>> - Better large-scale behaviour for hundreds-to-thousands of nodes
in
>>> sparse or battery-constrained setups
>>
>>Could you please clarify?
>>
>>-- Juliusz
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