All,
There have been some recent olsr instability behavior on the greater mesh tunnel'd network around the world.
Here is a possible candidate for the root cause of what people are seeing. Note, this is exactly the kind of data we want to confirm to ether keep or change a current parameter in the tunnel implementation--or provide the node admin with an ability to locally configure.
There are 2 options to define the tunnel link to OLSR:
1) "mode ether": This is a high availability cat5 or internet link. ETX (link cost) will be "0.1". If the link drops below 95% link quality, then OLSR will drop the link in the routing. (Mesh traffic across the tunnel might trigger a link drop if your service provider's network is not very robust).
2) NOT "mode ether": This is like an RF link characterization through the tunnel. ETX will be "1.0" or greater. OLSR won't drop the link until link quality falls below ~30%.
In checking the ETX values across the tunnel, we are running with #1 in the release. If you have experienced any instability, find the offending tunnel, assuming this is the root cause, and remove "mode ether" for the tunnel interface in /etc/config.olsrd (and /etc/config.mesh/olsrd), then reboot or restart olsrd.
Please post if you can confirm and/or know that your tunnel is experiencing this issue.
Joe AE6XE