[dcherba]

It is not possible to change anything that has happened and under the circumstances everyone tried to make the correct decisions and behaved extremely well considering the drive and emotions present. We can't change what has happened but we can work together to understand the problem with facts and then design a solution. Those of us who have designed protocols and done in depth analysis of network traffic all know the performance is probabilistic and there are no guarantee performance metrics for this type of network. The cost advantage and ease of implementation for this hardware is significant and has to be balanced with the performance. There is no question that there are many hazards that exist in drive station software and also the CRIO basic design that were exposed by the level of network traffic that was present this year. There is a real difference between a design that works every time and one that works most of the time.
To solve this problem and move ahead we need to divide the problem into a couple of pieces.
First we need to find and remove the software hazards that make the driver station and the CRIO vulnerable to missing packet and possible lockup conditions. Some of these hazards may have been in the software for years but really were exposed by the level of network traffic this year.
Second we need to make a realistic model of the network traffic by in depth recording some trial events and looking at the options for network configuration that will improve the overall performance or issue clear limits that will bring the performance into an acceptable range. The quality of some of the wireless hardware may in fact play a major role in this analysis.
Let’s focus on finding solutions that after all it one of the life lessons FIRST is all about.