Simple mods to CSMA dll

[mukundansridharan]

The request comes from the WWF project folks. Currently we have a liveliness parameter (which is a time delay) which is configurable from the dll, but the beaconing interval is set in (native) source code. We need to add a parameter to CSMA dll called "DiscoveryInterval" which should set the beaconing interval on the native side. The liveliness parameter should become a factor of the DiscoveryInternal and not an actual time. The default for the liveliness should be 3. A value of less than 1 is not acceptable and should default to 3 again.

[AnanthAtSamraksh]

but the beaconing interval is set in (native) source code.

Just for reference, this value is set in csmaMAC.cpp's csmaMAC::Initialize. The value at present is 5 secs. The corresponding line is

if(VirtTimer_SetOrChangeTimer(VIRT_TIMER_MAC_BEACON, 0, 5000000, FALSE, TRUE, beaconScheduler) != TimerSupported)

@MukundanAtSamraksh can you please explain this line (with an example perhaps)? For instance, if DiscoveryInternal is 5 secs, then liveness has to be 15 secs and above (and cannot be 5 secs)?

The liveliness parameter should become a factor of the DiscoveryInternal and not an actual time.

Will the user still have control over liveness (I guess not)?

[mukundansridharan]

User will have control over liveliness, for example they can set it to 2, and if they set discovery interval to 10sec, then the liveliness interval becomes 20secs. What I meant is that they cannot directly set it to 20secs, they will set the multiplication factor.

[ChrisAtSamraksh]

What if the DiscoveryInterval automatically updates the NeighborLivenessDelay to be 3 times the DiscoveryInterval but the user can just change NeighborLivenessDelay to be anything they want greater than the DiscoveryInterval?

So if I want DiscoveryInterval to be 5, it automatically sets NeighborLivenessDelay to be 15, then I set NeighborLivenessDelay to be 14 if I want (I think it is cleaner if they are both in seconds instead of one in seconds and the other a factor of the first).

[ChrisAtSamraksh]

I started work on this recently but one thing I am confused about is that it seems as if a lot of functions are not hooked up at all. There is a function SetNeighborLivelinessDelay() which calls Reconfigure() which calls InternalReConfigure() (all of that is within the dll) which calls the driver Samraksh_emote_net driver function InternalReConfigure() which does nothing.

So I'm hooking up a lot of the reconfigure functionality.

[AnanthAtSamraksh]

I have added the missing radio driver functionalities in this commit 26e16a7. Can you please review and cherry-pick this commit as well?

[WilliamAtSamraksh]

Shouldn't that be Liveness? Liveliness should have been deprecated.