Mitigating network storms

It's been about a month since we deployed a version of the AREDN software with a patch designed to mitigate network routing storms across the SoCal network.  Developed by Tim KN6PLV, the patch is actually pretty benign; it just makes OLSR, the routing daemon, somewhat smarter about recognizing storms and suppressing them.  Think of it as a vaccine for the network

Over the last month we gradually deployed it in most of the K6PVR nodes in Ventura County and western L.A. County, the K6ECG nodes on Mt. Wilson, and the K6BFG node on Magic Mountain.  And Keith AI6BX has deployed it in about 10 nodes in and around the Inland Empire.  As of this morning 40 nodes were running it and many of them are high-traffic nodes, which are the most effective places for the patched code to reside.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but since we deployed the patch the network has been quite stable.  The network monitoring tool Tim developed now consistently fails to report any evidence of routing storms.  Prior to pushing out the patch in SoCal we saw a couple.   SFWEM (the San Francisco Wireless Emergency Mesh), which is a much more highly-meshed network than SoCal, saw many of them. 

As a result of our positive outcomes while testing, the AREDN devs have merged KN6PLV's patch into the github repository.  Expect it to show up in tomorrow's nightly build.

If you run a high-traffic node, or are in a highly-meshed network, I encourage you to use this nightly build.  Your network will thank you.

Orv W6BI