[MVMA] A heads up on AREDN software development plans

[Chuck Gelm NC8Q]

On 8/19/25 23:37, Orv Beach wrote:
> AREDN®, as we’ve come to know it, is 11 years old. In that time it has 
> come a long way, supporting a wide variety of devices, a host of radio 
> bands, and has been deployed across the world. The UI has evolved, 
> tunnels have been added, bandwidth and throughput have increased, and 
> more features and services can be supported.
>
> The one constant in all this has been how AREDN® manages the network, 
> using a protocol called Optimized Link State Routing - OLSR. 
> Unfortunately as networks have grown, this protocol has buckled, and 
> sometimes broken, under the strain, as OLSR was never designed for the 
> size or variety of the networks we have.
>
> This year we added a new modern network protocol - Babel (see the 
> How-To in the online documentation for more information 
> <https://docs.arednmesh.org/en/latest/arednHow-toGuides/babel.html>). 
> The goal has been to replace OLSR after a period of testing and 
> migration, and we imagined it might take years to successfully 
> transition from one protocol to the other. Instead, we have been blown 
> away by how our community has embraced and requested this change.As of 
> this writing, almost 80% of nodes worldwide are running firmware which 
> uses the Babel protocol.
>
> With this in mind, we have decided to move more quickly with our Babel 
> transition. 2025 will be the last year we release AREDN® code which 
> contains OLSR; 2026 will be the year we only speak Babel.
>
> The Plan
>
> In 2025 we expect one or more additional AREDN® production releases. 
> These will be maintenance releases containing only critical bug fixes. 
> All new development work will happen in the Babel nightly builds.
>
> Then in 2026, the Babel nightly build will become the mainnightly 
> build, with the first production release being 4.26.1.0. To mark this 
> change, we will bump our major release number to 4, indicating this 
> major protocol change.
>
> Effects of this Plan
>
> Advantages for Babel-only networks:
>
>   * Reduced firmware size / memory footprint / cpu utilization on
>     individual nodes.
>   * Reduced network bandwidth utilized for maintaining routing
>     information. Babel only transmits routing changes when they are
>     detected, as compared to OLSR which broadcasts routing tables
>     continuously.
>   * Resistance to forming routing loops.
>
>
> Impacts to non-Babel networks:
>
>   * Nodes on non-Babel networks will continue to operate normally in
>     communicating with each other. These “legacy” nodes will not stop
>     operating, but they can continue to communicate with their peers
>     on their existing firmware releases.
>   * non-Babel nodes will not be able to communicate with Babel-only
>     nodes due to their inability to establish routes to those nodes.
>
>
> Impact when navigating the Supernode network:
>
>   * Once supernodes are migrated to Babel-only firmware, they may not
>     be able to route queries to non-Babel nodes.
>
>
> Other Impacts
>
>   * Nodes with 32 MB of RAM can’t run the Babel-only code
>     (predominantly the ‘XM’ hardware);  make plans on retiring or
>     replacing them. At this point only about 4% of the nodes on the
>     network are in this category.  As adjacent nodes convert to
>     Babel-only, these legacy nodes will be unable to connect to the
>     network.
>   * And, as always, people will be free to download and install any
>     legacy version of firmware they desire from the AREDN® download site.
>


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