Collab testbed/Feb2009

This was another implementation of a collaboration and network testbed. This one supported over fifty machines and a school server in a relative quiet location (RF-wise), a basement in a suburb of Boston.

Laptop Setup

The laptops had OS 8.2.1, testing 21 and 25 installed on them. If differences between the releases were seen, they were noted.

Access Point

The access point provided was either a DLink access point or an Active Antenna (depending on the test), connected to a computer with School server build 0.5.1r3 installed. This computer provides local DNS and HTTP caching of data.

Wireless Packet Snooping

A computer was setup to snoop the packet and record the traces for later study. This computer was equipped with three active antennas (two prototype, one pre-production), all set to the same channel.

School server build 0.5.1r3 (based on Fedora 9) was used on the snooping computer (a Dell SC440 w. two wired interfaces), with the following modifications:

• For convenience, X was added:
  • yum install gdm, gnome-session, gnome-terminal
  • Test using telinit 5
  • edit /etc/inittab to change the runlevel
• The dhcpd, dns, ejabberd, and apache services were permanently disabled using chkconfig
• The network scripts in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* were reduced to ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-lo.
• The udev rules in /etc/udev/rules.d/10-olpcmesh-rules and 65-xsmesh-rules were deleted.
• The interfaces default to channel 1, the channel being recorded, otherwise we would place ifcfg-msh[0-2] scripts in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ to set the channel on mesh interface detection.
• The setup_snoop script is run before logging any data.
• The do_snoop script is used to log data.