Subject: [homenet] renumbering issues, etc, in homenet

From: Dave Taht <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 14:02:27 -0700

Dear Brian:

I have unsubscribed from the homenet mailing list. In fact, all ietf
mailing lists. I realize, like multiple spy agencies, and the mafia,
that the only way to truly leave the ietf is feet first, but for the
next 6 months. I would rather get some coding done, because in my
world, it is code that is law, and code that comes first.

As for the renumbering and other problems homenet is coping with...

My basic request was basically that everyone on homenet dogfood what
exists (hnetd, babel) to see all the real problems renumbering induces
on their networks, their printers, OSes, and devices like file
servers, audio gear, roku, any of the thousands of devices now
available that semi-support ipv6, etc. Go have a shopping spree on
amazon.

I had also distributed a poll, to which there were 27+ replies,
describing the complexities of their home networks. I assert that many
home networks, not maintained by geeks, also have weirdnesses and
complexities.  I had hoped that with the publication of all those
results from that poll that it would begin to sink in just how complex
home networks already are, and how simplistic solutions, and
simplistic testing and simplistic documents and code were not going to
get anywhere. And that arbitrarily renumbering every device in
someones home was rather invasive,
after decades of stability with nat and ipv4.

If we can get users of hnetd above 5, perhaps with some of those poll
respondents, and a few people power cycling their ipv6 capable
cablemodems in particular on a regular basis, I think the real issues
would start to emerge.

Did the plugfest happen? If not, I would like everyone here to stay
home at the next ietf, expend 100 bucks or so on a couple openwrt
capable routers, and try to make each incremental bit of brokeness
better, and donate their savings in travel and hotel costs to some
suitable charity like SPI or ISC.

It would be better of course if everyone just started dogfooding
before getting home from *this* ietf.

I´ve dogfooded homenet products enough now - babeld with diversity
routing and source specific routing works great, at least over my
networks with ethernet and wifi. Everything else, not so much.

I have no desire to further subject my own networks and users to
arbitrary renumbering without truly tight bindings between ip
addresses and dns on common devices which simply does not exist today.
the dns work seems to have got no attention in a very long time,
either, even less than hnetd did.

I care far more about fixing queue management, and wifi in particular,
to give a damn about people at ipv6 step 18 ( a miracle happens ) when
stuff at step 0 (dhcpv6 clients and servers suck, hnetd is the systemd
of  embedded, the ISIS debate a futile joke) is so badly borken.

You´re on your own folks. Keep banging the rocks together. Openwrt
chaos calmer will freeze in few weeks with what exists, and the
embedded world will be stuck with that for another year.

In my case for what few IPv6 addrs I need, I get via a simple curl
script and cgi interface over ipv4. I use /128s. If anyone wants a
copy of that I can put it on github.

If it were up to me, I would make a strong play again for a mandate
for dedicated ipv6/48 addresses, portable across providers, assigned
to one´s home along with the physical address of the street. The
address itself is the only strong, safe identifier we have.

Please feel free to cc me on issues that I might care about, but that
is mostly just fixing wifi queue management these days, which is
eating all my time. I certainly wouldn´t mind if more folk joined the
make-wifi-fast effort instead of wasting time on pointless arguments
in homenet. To me, making wifi work better - given the projected
growth in it over the next 4 years in the 10 billion device range - is
far more important than ipv6 is, right now.

My current builds of openwrt chaos calmer, which include the gui
(unlike the openwrt nightlys), a bunch of wifi fixes, full support for
all methods of getting ipv6 addrs, some experimental queuing
disciplines, babels, some test tools, with hnetd and the dns proxy
installable *optionally* are at:
http://snapon.lab.bufferbloat.net/~cero3/ubnt/ar71xx/

for about 240 platforms, many of which you can buy off the shelf for
under 100 dollars. Presently I am evaluating the archer c7v2 as a
replacement platform for the old wndr3800. I would still advise people
just track the main nightlies.

-- 
Dave Täht
Let's make wifi fast, less jittery and reliable again!

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb

---

From: Lorenzo Colitti <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 16:31:50 -0500

> available that semi-support ipv6, etc. Go have a shopping spree on

It would be great if there were an easy-to-follow recipe on how to do this
(what to buy, how to install it, etc.)

To me, making wifi work better - given the projected
> far more important than ipv6 is, right now.

People saying "$PROBLEM is more important than IPv6 right now" for 20 years
is why it's taking 20 years to deploy IPv6. :-)

> Presently I am evaluating the archer c7v2 as a replacement platform for
> the old wndr3800. I would still advise people just track the main nightlies.
>

Is the c7v2 what you recommend using now? Does it work back on barrier
breaker as well, so people can get their feet when without having to run
experimental code before moving on to use the nightlies? I looked for
openwrt-capable hardware available where I live (Japan) and there wasn't an
easy/obvious choice. I ended up using two old boxes I had lying around.

---

From: Dave Taht <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 18:10:56 -0700

> (what to buy, how to install it, etc.)

I have generally found that the best way to get good documentation is to couple
the core developers of the software with new users, while recording (video or
audio) the results, and/or while taking extensive notes.

Usually major improvements to the software AND documentation quickly emerge.

It is often best to do that at a face to face meeting, over beer, when
one could be arranged. Often it takes a dev exposure to many new users
to understand what their expectation and abilities are. The only
company that has done this sort of usability study right recently is
Apple, IMHO. F2F while taking notes works really, really, well. I had
hoped this ietf that could happen.

A lot of what has gone wrong in the world (not just in software, but
in the design of aircraft and other pieces of hardware) is that
everyone seems to have forgotten "kelly´s rules", particularly rule 9
with the folk doing the spec completely disconnected from those on the
factory floor.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/aeronautics/skunkworks/14rules.html

As for the recommended hardware portion of this problem, let me try
that in another email.

> is why it's taking 20 years to deploy IPv6. :-)

Touche'! However my own skills are best applied to wifi now, and the
growth rate of wifi exceeds that of ipv6 also. We don´t break ipv6
along the way as we treat it as a first class object in all our
testing.