B.A.T.M.A.N.-Release-Party Wednesday 20. june at the C-Base in Berlin. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The B.A.T.M.A.N.-developer team would be happy to celebrate with YOU the 0.2 release of B.A.T.M.A.N. at the C-Base (in Berlin). FYI, there will also be a free barrel of cool beer waiting to be flushed. Version 0.2 can reasonably be called stable now. It works quite performant, supports multiple interfaces, has a low CPU-load, a robustly working algorithm underneath, and autonomously negotiates UDP-Tunnels to GWs which ultimately enables long-term and stable internet connections. A number of users reported quite excitedly about the amazing experiences they made with this protocol. Well, we want to stay neutral so join in to hear them and try batman for yourself.
Currently B.A.T.M.A.N is available for Linux only. The ports for Mac OS-X and BSD have fallen asleep and are waiting for a diligent bee ... Maybe there will once also exist a windows port.
Many thanks to all the people who helped to realize this in such a short amount of time.
Merchandizing ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
We are thinking about printing further T-shirts with the B.A.T.M.A.N.-Logo (as you can see on http://open-mesh.net/batman ) and sell them at the cost of expenses. Unfortunately the price is not clear by now but will be about or less than 15 Euro. If you are interested please send a mail with your size and the limit you are willing to pay.
Considerations for the parallel operation of OLSR and B.A.T.M.A.N. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In Berlin we are now facing a phase in which both routing protocols will be used in parallel. Currently we are aware of one issue where this can cause problems. This is in case of OLSR-Internet traffic passing a dual-stack (OLSR and B.A.T.M.A.N.) node where the B.A.T.M.A.N daemon is configured for tunneled GW selection. Then each OLSR-towards-internet packet will be magically caught and warped to the currently selected (and maybe several hops away) B.A.T.M.A.N. GW. where the packets pop-up again and follow their usual path through the internet to their final destination. This has caused confusion since also programs like traceroute do not show the intermediate hops which the packet has passed (tunnelled) between the related B.A.T.M.A.N. node and the GW.
This is because such a dual-stack mesh node (where the B.A.T.M.A.N daemon is configured for tunneled GW selection) consequently has two default routes. One due to OLSR and another due to B.A.T.M.A.N.. The thing is, that both are ending up in the same routing table and one of them (the latter) has a higher priority than the other. So every packet passing along with a destination address matching only the default entry of the routing table will end up in the tunnel to the currently selected B.A.T.M.A.N. GW.
The Internet-GW selection mode of B.A.T.M.A.N. is optional and should be disabled or used with care especially on nodes with a dedicated RF-postion (and such used by many others as an intermediate hop) like churches and other high buildings. Enduser using Notebooks or PDAs should be able to use this feature without causing trouble.
Outlook ^^^^^^^^^^^
In order to make the parallel deployment of both protocols even more smoothly, a number of new features have found their way into 0.3. Then it will also be possible to maintain and use a the OLSR and the B.A.T.M.A.N. default route in parallel.
Therefore we will also release the first version of the upcoming B.A.T.M.A.N. generation (0.3 alpha).
At the same time we already began working on the next generation of B.A.T.M.A.N. which will be called B.A.T.M.A.N. Advanced. It works on Layer 2 and creates a virtual network switch of all nodes participating. It offers a bunch of new possibilities and features which wait for you to be explored. To offer you a stable plattform you can experiment with we will release 0.1 alpha. We will also provide a set of tools (the B.A.T.M.A.N. toolchain - battool) to bring you in the position to observe the magic and to debug your setup or our daemon. ;-)
see you june 20th, the B.A.T.M.A.N. development team