Team Fusion #364, Bayou Regional, FMS Woes

[linuxboy]

Originally Posted by GrimmReaper

Yeah i'd like to comment on my understanding of the field WiFi setup and maybe this will help clear up a few concerns. I am not an expert on the FRC Field, but i have extensive networking knowledge, I have not been involved in the field setup, but i've done a lot of research on it and I do believe I have a good grasp on this, as such - if i am incorrect - please correct me ;-)

Think of it like this, if you walk into starbucks with your laptop and connect to their wifi, you don't choose the channel you are on - the starbucks router does. If you and 5 other buddies all walk into starbucks and connect - you're all on the same single router, on the same single channel all connecting to chiefdelphi at the same time with no issues. The field is essentially the same situation - your robot routers in bridge mode are equivalent to a laptop at starbucks - but they are really a middleman allowing you to connect both a camera and crio to that network - but they are essentially conneting the same way.

Specialties for the FRC Field
1) I believe in most cases the field WILL be configured for 5ghz, all of our routers are capable of 5ghz, the lack of 5ghz on classmates is irrelevant as they are physically connected for the matches.

2) I'm unsure if every team is given an individual WPA password via the kiosk or if they are all the same WPA password, however the kiosk does set the ip address of the router for sure. Separate passwords could allow them to restrict acces a little better, but it can still be done with a single shared key.

3) From what i've gathered - the field will only accept traffic from those teams that are scheduled on the field, so in theory any additional potential traffic from other teams in queue or elsewhere should not be present on the field network during a match.

4) all teams while connected to the field are essentially part of one big network, in theory you could all connect to each other, and you are all able to connect to the field FMS Server, kinect kiosks, etc... However this traffic COULD easily be limited on the networking side, but i'm unaware if the FRC Field network sets up anything to segment the team networks.

5) Someone mentioned multiple SSID's. It's possible that they actually setup separate SSID's for each team, but I doubt they'd set it up that way, i don't see a good reason for that, there is most likely one single SSID, which may not even be broadcasted, so that your average high school hacker would have a more difficult time trying to get into the field network. Presumably there is just one SSID - much like the one SSID you'd connect to at Starbucks...

If i left any details out, let me know... but i believe that's a fairly good representation of the field network.

As for the actual problems that teams experienced and possible causes, i wish i could add some insight to that, i've been racking my brain on it for the past couple of days, watching tirelessly for someone to come up with the magical answer so i can stop wondering as well :-)

Good luck to everyone!
- Jon

I don't mean to be mean, however some of that is incorrect I will go through the items and comment about my understanding.

1) I agree
2) Each team has a separate WPA key, they are generated Wednesday night I believe
3) This is done by having a separate SSIDs (unbroadcast I _think_, but the same as the team number I would guess) and keys for each team
4) Each team has it's own VLAN, I'm not too good at VLANs so I can't describe this too well, FMS can talk to anything, but each DS cannot talk to other DSs or other Robots (this is why, for those of you that have done field setup, each player station has a labeled port on the SCC, instead of just plugging into the switch)
5) The field AP is reconfigured every match, with the SSIDs for the teams in that match, with the appropriate WPA keys. This is why the scorekeepers must "prestart" the match. The SSIDs are not broadcast I _think_

What you described seems almost like it could be a FMS Light setup for a competition.
I know these things from doing quite a bit of volunteering, and asking the FTA a lot of questions while I do.

I agree, though with that last bit.

- Oliver