Base-station control node configuration
There are lots of questions surrounding the control NUC in a roof-top base-station. Whereas the fixed endpoint is a separate aggregate with the control NUC running a boss/ops, a base-station is part of the mothership aggregate and the "control NUC" is not really a boss or a subboss.
Its responsibilities include:
- RF monitoring via an attached NUC
- environmental monitoring via attached sensors
- acting independently to address RF/environmental issues if disconnected from the mothership
The last involves its ability to talk to the power controller and possibly RF frontend to shut things down.
Questions:
- What OS does the NUC run? Probably Linux of some flavor as that is the most comfortable for the monitoring tools. The subset of the power control and Arduino control that we currently do under FreeBSD, should work fine under Linux. Or do we run Xen with assorted VMs?
- How does the node appear to Emulab? Is it a manually loaded infrastructure node like boss or ops? Is it an experiment node permanently allocated to an experiment but able to be easily reloaded like a subboss node? Or is it a shared vnode host capable of running vnodes to handle the various responsibilities?
- Where is it on the network? Is it Internet-facing on the control network or can it just be on the private HW control net? It may need the latter for access to power controller, switch or RF frontend.