[mesh-dev] We need to talk about batman

[max b]

Can we get a more clear understanding of how exactly we might reproduce
these issues? All of my desktop clients (mac osx, linux, windows 7) seem to
be able to connect. They're all able to view youtube videos and seem to
browse the web fairly regularly. My android phone is working for 90% of
applications, although it looks like maybe some of the apps aren't
connecting reliably. That being said, some of these apps seem to always
have some sort of connectivity issues and I'm having a hard time isolating
them.

Furthermore, isn't this MTU problem an issue that would occur on every
batman-adv network that is connected to the internet? I'm not able to
articulate this as well as I'd like, but I'm not seeing how this is
specific to our particular network structure...

Also - tried this on my picostation:
root at my:~# iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -s 10.0.0.0/8 -p tcp
--tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -j TCPMSS  --set-mss 1400
root at my:~# iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -d 10.0.0.0/8 -p tcp
--tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -j TCPMSS  --set-mss 1400

I'm wondering, though, that if this is also layer 3 routing, it probably
won't flag the sort of issue that you're describing...

I'm curious though, if the scenario you've described is accurate, why
wouldn't the bridge (which is layer 3, and which has an ip address and a
set mtu) respond with the ICMP response? In terms of layer 3 traffic, we
have a client with a layer 3 ip addr and then we also have a mesh node with
a layer 3 ip addr (which is the bridged interface).


Also - are these only hosts which have dhcp clients that don't respect the
MTU option?


Hopefully catch you all on Tuesday, but things have been a little crazy on
my end, so we'll see....

On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Alexander Papazoglou <papazoga at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Max,
>
> We can't do what you're suggesting because the open0 interface is not
> operating as a layer 3 interface. It is
> bridged to br-openmesh along with bat0. This means that an over-sized
> packet (e.g. one that doesn't fit in the
> L2TP envelope of size ~1400bytes) arriving at open0 and headed toward
> bat0, wouldn't trigger an ICMP
> response, and would be unceremoniously dropped.
>
> The ICMP response is triggered by the IP protocol layer (layer 3). That
> response is also the only way
> a Windows (and I think OS X) client would know that the mtu is smaller
> than it thinks.
>
> Assuming this is correct, which is still up for debate, we have two
> options:
>
> (1) find a way to make the Win/OSX (Android/iOS?) client understand that
> it must use a lower mtu
>      (DHCP is not an option).
> (2) remove the bridge and forward at layer 3 (so that ICMP responses would
> be triggered, and the
>      client can discover its mtu).
>
> Alex
>
>
> 2014-10-17 12:06 GMT-07:00 Max B <maxb.personal at gmail.com>:
>
>  Not that I'm arguing in favor of layer 2 vs layer 3 forwarding (although
>> we're already pretty deep in certain parts of layer 2 implementations), but
>> why can't we just match the MTU of the open0 interface to the bat0
>> interface?
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/17/14, 11:51 AM, Alexander Papazoglou wrote:
>>
>>    Hello mesh-dev.
>>
>> I think we may finally have an explanation of the vexing issue of "I can't
>> connect to the internet over peoplesopen.net."
>>
>> Marc and I spent some time staring at wireshark dumps and  thinking
>> about why some clients are unable to consistently connect via the
>> tunnel last night. I think Marc came up with a disappointing but correct
>> answer: it is basically an mtu issue (mtu is not being discovered
>> correctly), BUT there is no good fix because we are tunneling at layer 2.
>>
>>  When a packet arrives at a node from a client with too large an mtu,
>>  what SHOULD happen in a normal forwarding situation (per RFC 1191)
>> is that the node issue a ICMP "Destination Unreachable" packet with a
>> "Fragmentation required" code. The client then uses this information to
>> reset its mtu.
>>
>>  This doesn't happen because we aren't really forwarding (forwarding
>> happens
>> at layer 3). Instead, our interfaces (open0 and bat0) are bridged. So if
>> a frame
>>  coming from open0 doesn't fit into bat0 it most likely gets silently
>> dropped.
>>
>>  So bridging open0 with bat0 is a disaster. A quick fix might be to
>> replace
>> bridging with forwarding (at the IP level). I suspect this is not the
>> right thing
>> to do. It might be better to abandon the idea of meshing at layer 2; there
>> are numerous advantages to this.
>>
>> In any case; we should discuss options this Tuesday.
>>
>> Alex
>>
>>
>>
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>
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