[Sussex] Project Advice....

[Dave Phelan]

Richie,

On 9/28/06, Richie Jarvis <richie at helkit.com> wrote:
> It all works pretty well most of the time, but has a few niggles which
> really annoy me (and several of the others in the group, and elsewhere
> in the world that are using this system.)  So what I want to do, and
> have done for ages, is to write our own version of this system, which is
> compatible with the AODV Mesh (for easy switchover), can be loaded to
> the nodes without having to remove them (the MeshAP can download and
> install new versions in-situ, by overwriting the cramfs files), and can
> interface with the WIANA system (pretty easy, WIANA downloads a
> text-based key:variable file, and then a script runs through it all to
> setup the node itself.)  Oh, and the other thing that would be great is
> if we can also produce a similar setup on the OpenWRT system, that can
> inter-mesh with the old compaqs we have, as this would reduce our node
> costs considerably.

piertopier.net have abandoned MeshAP. We're using a mixture of pebble
Linux on intel, and openWRT on linksys APs, and are using OSPF and WDS
for the routing. We don't have all the bells and whistles of MeshAP,
but then we don't need them.

AODV is an interesting networking protocol for ad-hoc, on-demand
networks, but with a fixed node network, we found MeshAP was happier
autoblocking it's own route to the internet when the signal strength
momentarily dropped. A fixed link routing protocol is sufficient.

We've also moved from NoCatSplash as the captive portal to Chilispot,
which with a bit more back-end smarts (radius and an SQL database)
allows us to give registered users longer dwell-times than guests, and
do bandwidth capping.

http://wiki.piertopier.net/index.php/Technical has some more detail,
but it's all still a work in progress.

Moving to a set of software on a debian-ish Linux base, rather than a
monolithic OS drop, allows us to look at additional platforms, such as
the gumstix tiny tiny device:
http://www.piertopier.net/forum.htm
As long as the software set (hostapd, chilispot, iptables) is
available or portable to the platform, you're not stuck with
intel-based devices...

> What I need is some advice here.  I am worried about doing all of this
> myself - I've been very tempted to try and do it all myself many times,
> and have not got past the thinking and requirements stage as yet.  I am
> also scared that if I do try and do it myself, I will make a hash of it,
> and leave some crucial flaw in the system.

Testing will help this. Do you have paying customers? Since
piertopier.net is free, we can break it and just get a few complaints.
We try not to, but volunteers and beer and ssh sessions sometimes get
a bit messy...

Can you either have a small partition of the network you can test
under, with friendly users? Or build a small test environment?

> The upshot of all of this is
> that I need to better understand how to sell this to the open-source
> community, and where it really fits in the grand scheme of things, as
> this would be something which (a) I am interested in, and (b) I need
> some help to implement.
>
> I think that there are enough mesh networks around now who are using the
> MeshAP, but would jump at the chance of something which is truely open.

There is indeed a lot of disatisfaction with MeshAP, and one of the
piertopier.net volunteers responsible for much of the work removing
MeshAP has had a number of enquiries from people.

My best advice would be this: work out what you *need*, work out what
is *nice to have*, and then find the best implementations of that out
there already. Create as little custom stuff as possible.

Any assistance piertopier.net can be, I'm sure we'd be delighted to
share our experiences.

Dave Ph
-- 
 Dave Phelan CCIE#3590   ICQ: 50180416    GSM: +44 (0)7776 168561
 dave.phelan at gmail.com                  http://www.davephelan.org
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