Case for a new (missing) interface mode
Started by Anonymous ·
I want to propose a new interface mode that seems to be missing for a specific but typical use case: An node thats both connected via a slow interface like LoRa as well as via a fast one like Backbone interface. The usual configuration is to set the fast one to Boundary mode and the slow one to Access Point mode. This prohibts the fast interface to spam the slow interface with announces. But it also severly limits the capabilities of the slow interface. It will now (according to my knowledge) also prohibit the propagation of announces coming to the slow interface (via LoRa for example). If the node has a slow interface only the mode would be set to Gateway, and it would propagate everything it receives as usual. But once the announce reaches a node thats also connected to a fast interface the announce will not be relayed further. This acts like a blockade and will split networks announce-wise if there is no other way around the AP mode node.
I have seen RTNode "solve" this by adding some sort of firewall logic, but I dont fully trust this project and would like to see a solution in the reference implementations as well.
Maybe there is a good reasonig for things working as they are right now, I would love to hear them. Right now it seems to me that there should be another mode (lets call it ap-boundary) that only propagates announces from other ap-boundary interfaces as well as gateway interfaces, but announces coming from boundary interfaces would not be propagated. Maybe (probably) there is a better way to solve this, I would like to hear your thoughts about this.
This made me realise, that I still don't fully understand announce propagation rules. Especially when announcements are rebroadcast on the same interface they came in.
I think they are rebroadcast on the same interface if transport is enabled, the mode is something other than AP and it's some kind of radio interface like Rnode. If so, you could use a combination of boundary and roaming for that usecase. But I'm not 100% sure.
Some more fine grained options would be nice. Like some setting per interface what gets send where and which interface is set to transport. On the other hand stuff works ok as it is and other things might be more important.
aetherlab wrote:
https://rns.recipes/forum/showcase/reticulum-announce-propagation-simulator
It would be super nice to have the option to have one of the central "hub" nodes to have an AP mode interface for the connection to the other node. It would show my point exactly :) it would result in two separate networks, at least in one direction.
Ok, thanks to aetherlab I figured it out. You can try it in the simulator: Add a intermediary node, set both directions to AP (you can imagine a third direction from the intermediary going to the testnet via boundary mode) and announce from one of the two network segments. The node acts as a blocker between those segments.