Feedback and Improvements

Based on the feedback on our demonstration video and project report we would make the following changes and additions.

Our test mesh network used VLANs to create a management network on each node. This allowed each node to be accessed via an out-of-band network that is not the mesh network itself which helped during configuration of the network. This was done on the last numerical logical interface port on each device. The Raspberry Pi used a wireless access point as a management network given the lack of ethernet ports and a built-in VLAN capable switch.

The internet connection did not resemble a connection like Starlink in our network. For future work, we would allow configuration of our internet connection using tc-netem, This would allow the ability to configure various internet network conditions adjusting jitter, latency, bandwidth and packet loss. These parameters could then be tuned to more closely resemble a Starlink connection and thus allow a more accurate evaluation of how a mesh network in conjunction would perform in terms of QoE and QoS.

The links used in our test mesh network consisted of most if not all links being only a single hop away to the internet gateway. Furthermore, we only had ethernet links which were of ideal conditions and wireless links which were only a single hop. In order to develop a more realistic network in terms of the situations we outlined in our background, we would introduce more nodes to create situations with multi-hop wireless links.

We would like to thank everyone who provided feedback and recommendations.