Totally agree to stop using the tunnel.py!
Just want to add some my thoughts.
There is a fact that the main users of USRP/GNURadio are the students from universities.
Firstly, these people lack the experience on the communications development, either in software designing or in wireless communications theory.
Secondly, the reasons why they select the USRP/GNURadio as the development platform for their research, as my understanding is that they (including I) expect the USRP/GNURadio can provide a very quick solution to build a experimental physical layer for the research over this platform. Actually, most of the time, this pressure comes from their professors who are only focused on advanced research of a narrow area, but don't tolerate too much time of a student on the whole system development. This is the background in which why so many people always try to find the out-of-the-box solution in GNURadio/USRP.
I don't want to put negative points to this kind of expectation, but it seems to be just reality. It may give us a hint how the GNURadio/USRP is evolving from the customers' expect.
USRP/GNURadio are great work in establishing a flexible framework of software defined radio. But as Tom said, the communications itself is very very hard. How to help the customer to build a robust and strong radio communication system in their specific research needs is really a big challenge. I think the community needs more technical discussion the communications and signal processing theory in practical ways, besides the software development only.
Also, the GNURadio itself need more evolution on the demonstrative solutions of the communications, like the OFDM in improving.
And of course, this is a open source community. The GNURadio needs everyone's contribution, including both issues reports and new developments, new applications.