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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "mesh network".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html">Dugnadsnett for alle stiller på Oslo Maker Faire i januar 2014</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         10th December 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Helga 18. og 19. januar 2014 arrangeres
  32 <a href="http://makerfaireoslo.no/no/program/dugnadsnett">Oslo Maker
  33 Faire</a>, og <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnadsnett for
  34 alle</a> har fått plass!  Planen er å ha et bord med en plakat der vi
  35 forteller om hva Dugnadsnett for alle er for noe, og et lite verksted
  36 der vi hjelper folk som er interessert i å få opp sin egen mesh-node.
  37 Jeg gleder meg til å se hvordan prosjektet blir mottatt der.</p>
  38
  39 <p>Målet med dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo er å få på plass et datanett
  40 for kommunikasjon ved hjelp av radio-repeaterstasjoner (kalt
  41 mesh-noder) som gjør at en kan direkte kommunisere med slekt, venner
  42 og bekjente i Oslo via andre som deltar i dugnadsnettet, samt gjøre
  43 det mulig komme ut på internett via dugnadsnettet.  Første delmål er å
  44 kunne sende SMS-meldinger vha. IP-telefoni løsningen
  45 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project</a> mellom
  46 deltagerne i Dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo.  Formålet er å ta tilbake
  47 kontrollen over egen nett-infrastruktur og gjøre det dyrere å bedrive
  48 massiv innsamling av informasjon om borgernes bruk av datanett.</p>
  49
  50 <p>Høres dette interessant ut?  Bli med på prosjektet, fortell oss
  51 hvor du kunne tenke deg å sette opp en radio-repeater (slik at folk i
  52 nærheten kan finne hverandre ved hjelp av
  53 <a href="http://flynor.net/mesh/mesh.php">kartet over planlagte og
  54 eksisterende radio-repeatere</A>), bli med på epostlisten
  55 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
  56 (at) nuug.no</a> og stikk innom
  57 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">IRC-kanalen
  58 #dugnadsnett.no</a>.  Så langt er det planlagt over 40
  59 radio-repeatere, med VPN-forbindelser via Internet for å la de delene
  60 av nettet som ikke når hverandre via radio kunne snakke med hverandre
  61 likevel.</p>
  62
  63       </div>
  64       <div class="tags">
  65
  66
  67         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
  68
  69
  70       </div>
  71     </div>
  72     <div class="padding"></div>
  73
  74     <div class="entry">
  75       <div class="title">
  76         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
  77       </div>
  78       <div class="date">
  79         30th November 2013
  80       </div>
  81       <div class="body">
  82         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
  83 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
  84 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
  85 experiment with interesting network technology, the
  86 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
  87 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
  88 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
  89 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
  90 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
  91 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
  92 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
  93 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
  94 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
  95 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
  96 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
  97 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
  98 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
  99 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
 100 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
 101 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
 102
 103       </div>
 104       <div class="tags">
 105
 106
 107         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 108
 109
 110       </div>
 111     </div>
 112     <div class="padding"></div>
 113
 114     <div class="entry">
 115       <div class="title">
 116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
 117       </div>
 118       <div class="date">
 119         13th November 2013
 120       </div>
 121       <div class="body">
 122         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
 123 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
 124 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
 125 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
 126 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
 127 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
 128 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
 129 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
 130 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
 131 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
 132 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
 133 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
 134 right away. :)</p>
 135
 136       </div>
 137       <div class="tags">
 138
 139
 140         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 141
 142
 143       </div>
 144     </div>
 145     <div class="padding"></div>
 146
 147     <div class="entry">
 148       <div class="title">
 149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
 150       </div>
 151       <div class="date">
 152         10th November 2013
 153       </div>
 154       <div class="body">
 155         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
 156 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
 157 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
 158 MR3040 as a mesh node using
 159 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
 160
 161 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
 162 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
 163 and downloaded
 164 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
 165 recommended firmware image</a>
 166 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
 167 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
 168 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
 169 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
 170 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
 171
 172 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
 173 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
 174 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
 175 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
 176 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
 177 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
 178 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
 179 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
 180 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
 181 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
 182 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
 183 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
 184 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
 185
 186 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
 187 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
 188 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
 189 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
 190 them:</p>
 191
 192 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
 193
 194 <pre>
 195
 196 config interface 'loopback'
 197         option ifname 'lo'
 198         option proto 'static'
 199         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
 200         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
 201
 202 config globals 'globals'
 203         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
 204
 205 config interface 'lan'
 206         option ifname 'eth0'
 207         option type 'bridge'
 208         option proto 'dhcp'
 209         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
 210         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
 211         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
 212         option ip6assign '60'
 213
 214 config interface 'mesh'
 215         option ifname 'adhoc0'
 216         option mtu '1528'
 217         option proto 'batadv'
 218         option mesh 'bat0'
 219 </pre>
 220
 221 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
 222 <pre>
 223
 224 config wifi-device 'radio0'
 225         option type 'mac80211'
 226         option channel '11'
 227         option hwmode '11ng'
 228         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
 229         option htmode 'HT20'
 230         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
 231         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
 232         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
 233         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
 234         option disabled '0'
 235
 236 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
 237         option device 'radio0'
 238         option ifname 'adhoc0'
 239         option network 'mesh'
 240         option encryption 'none'
 241         option mode 'adhoc'
 242         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
 243         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
 244 </pre>
 245 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
 246 <pre>
 247
 248 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
 249         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
 250         option 'aggregated_ogms'
 251         option 'ap_isolation'
 252         option 'bonding'
 253         option 'fragmentation'
 254         option 'gw_bandwidth'
 255         option 'gw_mode'
 256         option 'gw_sel_class'
 257         option 'log_level'
 258         option 'orig_interval'
 259         option 'vis_mode'
 260         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
 261         option 'distributed_arp_table'
 262         option 'network_coding'
 263         option 'hop_penalty'
 264
 265 # yet another batX instance
 266 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
 267 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
 268 </pre>
 269
 270 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
 271 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
 272 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
 273
 274       </div>
 275       <div class="tags">
 276
 277
 278         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 279
 280
 281       </div>
 282     </div>
 283     <div class="padding"></div>
 284
 285     <div class="entry">
 286       <div class="title">
 287         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
 288       </div>
 289       <div class="date">
 290         27th October 2013
 291       </div>
 292       <div class="body">
 293         <p>The
 294 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
 295 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
 296 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
 297 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
 298 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
 299 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
 300 of a plan to simplify the build system for
 301 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
 302 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
 303 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
 304 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
 305 Raspberry Pi.</p>
 306
 307 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
 308 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
 309 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
 310 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
 311 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
 312 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
 313 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
 314 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
 315 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
 316 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
 317 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
 318 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
 319 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
 320 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
 321 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
 322 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
 323 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
 324 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
 325 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
 326 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
 327 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
 328 available from
 329 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
 330 upstream project page</a>.</p>
 331
 332 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
 333 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
 334 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
 335 list:</p>
 336
 337 <p><pre>
 338 #!/bin/sh
 339 set -e # Exit on first error
 340 rootdir="$1"
 341 cd "$rootdir"
 342 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
 343 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
 344 EOF
 345 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
 346 # install a kernel somewhere too.
 347 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
 348     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 349 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 350 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
 351 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
 352 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
 353 </pre></p>
 354
 355 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
 356 to build the image:</p>
 357
 358 <pre>
 359 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
 360     --variant minbase \
 361     --arch armel \
 362     --distribution jessie \
 363     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
 364     --image test.img \
 365     --size 600M \
 366     --bootsize 64M \
 367     --boottype vfat \
 368     --log-level debug \
 369     --verbose \
 370     --no-kernel \
 371     --no-extlinux \
 372     --root-password raspberry \
 373     --hostname raspberrypi \
 374     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
 375     --customize `pwd`/customize \
 376     --package netbase \
 377     --package git-core \
 378     --package binutils \
 379     --package ca-certificates \
 380     --package wget \
 381     --package kmod
 382 </pre></p>
 383
 384 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
 385 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
 386 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
 387 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
 388 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
 389 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
 390 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
 391
 392 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
 393 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
 394 build dependency list.</p>
 395
 396 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
 397 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
 398 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
 399 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
 400
 401       </div>
 402       <div class="tags">
 403
 404
 405         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
 406
 407
 408       </div>
 409     </div>
 410     <div class="padding"></div>
 411
 412     <div class="entry">
 413       <div class="title">
 414         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
 415       </div>
 416       <div class="date">
 417         21st October 2013
 418       </div>
 419       <div class="body">
 420         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
 421 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
 422 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
 423 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
 424 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
 425 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
 426 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
 427 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
 428
 429 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
 430 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
 431 instead, I started playing with a
 432 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
 433 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
 434 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
 435 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
 436 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
 437 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
 438 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
 439 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
 440 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
 441 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
 442 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
 443 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
 444 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
 445 every client on the local network.</p>
 446
 447 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
 448 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
 449 and a script
 450 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
 451 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
 452 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
 453 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
 454 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
 455 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
 456 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
 457 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
 458 support.</p>
 459
 460 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
 461 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
 462
 463 <p><pre>
 464 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
 465     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
 466 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
 467 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
 468 %
 469 </pre></p>
 470
 471 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
 472 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
 473 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
 474 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
 475 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
 476 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
 477
 478 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
 479 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
 480 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
 481
 482 <p><table>
 483
 484 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
 485 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
 486 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
 487 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
 488 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
 489 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
 490
 491 </table></p>
 492
 493 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
 494 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
 495 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
 496 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
 497 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
 498 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
 499 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
 500
 501       </div>
 502       <div class="tags">
 503
 504
 505         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 506
 507
 508       </div>
 509     </div>
 510     <div class="padding"></div>
 511
 512     <div class="entry">
 513       <div class="title">
 514         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
 515       </div>
 516       <div class="date">
 517         11th October 2013
 518       </div>
 519       <div class="body">
 520         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
 521 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
 522 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
 523 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
 524 successful examples like
 525 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
 526 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
 527 (see
 528 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
 529 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
 530 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
 531 can be seen from their
 532 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
 533 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
 534 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
 535 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
 536 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
 537
 538 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
 539 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
 540 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
 541 my recent involvement in
 542 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
 543 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
 544 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
 545 when possible, given that most communication between people are
 546 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
 547 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
 548 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
 549 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
 550 important over the years.</p>
 551
 552 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
 553 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
 554 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
 555 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
 556 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
 557 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
 558 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
 559 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
 560 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
 561 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
 562 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
 563 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
 564 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
 565 speakers about this talk (from
 566 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
 567
 568 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
 569
 570 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
 571 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
 572 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
 573 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
 574 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
 575 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
 576 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
 577 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
 578 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
 579 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
 580 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
 581 that project (from
 582 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
 583
 584 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
 585
 586 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
 587 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
 588 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
 589 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
 590 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
 591 based community mesh networks.</p>
 592
 593 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
 594 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
 595 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
 596 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
 597 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
 598 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
 599 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
 600 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
 601 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
 602
 603 <p><table>
 604 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
 605 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
 606 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
 607 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
 608 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
 609 </table></p>
 610
 611 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
 612 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
 613 VillageTelco about
 614 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
 615 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
 616 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
 617 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
 618 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
 619 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
 620
 621 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
 622 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
 623 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
 624 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
 625
 626 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
 627 us on IRC, either channel
 628 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
 629 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
 630 irc.freenode.net.</p>
 631
 632 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
 633 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
 634 and Innovation called
 635 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
 636 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
 637 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
 638 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
 639 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
 640 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
 641 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
 642 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
 643
 644 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
 645 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
 646 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
 647 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
 648 mesh system.</p>
 649
 650       </div>
 651       <div class="tags">
 652
 653
 654         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 655
 656
 657       </div>
 658     </div>
 659     <div class="padding"></div>
 660
 661     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="mesh network.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
 662     <div id="sidebar">
 663
 664
 665
 666 <h2>Archive</h2>
 667 <ul>
 668
 669 <li>2014
 670 <ul>
 671
 672 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
 673
 674 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
 675
 676 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (4)</a></li>
 677
 678 </ul></li>
 679
 680 <li>2013
 681 <ul>
 682
 683 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
 684
 685 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
 686
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 704
 705 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
 706
 707 </ul></li>
 708
 709 <li>2012
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 733
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 735
 736 </ul></li>
 737
 738 <li>2011
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 754
 755 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
 756
 757 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
 758
 759 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
 760
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 762
 763 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
 764
 765 </ul></li>
 766
 767 <li>2010
 768 <ul>
 769
 770 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
 771
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 779
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 781
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 783
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 785
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 787
 788 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
 789
 790 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
 791
 792 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
 793
 794 </ul></li>
 795
 796 <li>2009
 797 <ul>
 798
 799 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
 800
 801 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
 802
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 804
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 806
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 808
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 810
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 812
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 814
 815 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
 816
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 818
 819 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
 820
 821 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
 822
 823 </ul></li>
 824
 825 <li>2008
 826 <ul>
 827
 828 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
 829
 830 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
 831
 832 </ul></li>
 833
 834 </ul>
 835
 836
 837
 838 <h2>Tags</h2>
 839 <ul>
 840
 841  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
 842
 843  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
 844
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 846
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 848
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 852
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 854
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 856
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 858
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 860
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 862
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 864
 865  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
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 868
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 870
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 872
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 876
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 878
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 880
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 890
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 892
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 894
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 896
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 898
 899  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (11)</a></li>
 900
 901  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
 902
 903  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
 904
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 906
 907  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
 908
 909  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
 910
 911  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
 912
 913  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
 914
 915  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
 916
 917  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
 918
 919  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
 920
 921  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (35)</a></li>
 922
 923  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
 924
 925  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
 926
 927  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (44)</a></li>
 928
 929  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
 930
 931  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
 932
 933  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (22)</a></li>
 934
 935  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
 936
 937  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
 938
 939  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
 940
 941  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
 942
 943  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (29)</a></li>
 944
 945 </ul>
 946
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 949     <p style="text-align: right">
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