Hey everyone,

Happy Monday to you (please don't lynch me!)

I've been working on adding a mesh node to my home network with the intent of being able to access mesh resources from my house.  I followed the directions here http://ohiopacket.org/index.php/Integrating_HSMM-MESH_into_an_existing_network and am able to ping the WiFi address of my node so I know the static route part is working, however I am stuck when it comes to the name resolution part.  I can't access my mesh node (except by IP address) or anything on the mesh because the name resolution isn't working.

Has anyone gotten this working?  Am I missing something simple somewhere?  My home network is running on a Netgear router running DD-WRT firmware and from what I can tell, I need to tell that router to forward DNS requests for ".mesh" networks to the mesh node but for the life of me I can't figure out how.

Help me oh wise and knowing meshers, you're my only hope!

73,

Travis W9HDG

Away with your weapons, I mean you no harm :-)

Have you checked this page:

http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/documentation/96-using-the-mesh.html

Down at the bottom it explains how to have a mesh node be a gateway between your LAN and the mesh, and more specifically things you may need to set on PC's on the LAN to be able to talk to the mesh.

Happy Meshing

Jim

Have you added the LAN-gateway mesh-node's IP to the Primary DNS setting of the PC?

I dont know about OS X, but I know with Windoze, if you do not have it as the Primary DNS server in the settings (have it as Secondary, Tertiary, etc), it wont work properly. This would not hinder your laptop if you set the secondary to a public DNS (8.8.4.4) or similar. When Primary fails to answer appropriately, it will drop to Secondary, Tertiary, etc, as designed.

I think on Debian/OS X, you can set multiple DNS servers in the setting's text file, and they will work in order, so place the Mesh node first, and more as secondary, tertiary, and so on.

Give that a shot and report back if it helped or not. Im curious and I know we WILL run into this again for someone else.

73

Jim

NOTE: by setting up your main router to forward all 10.x packets to the mesh you will be allowing any device that connects to your network to send out data.  One must be espcialy careful that random devices do not attempt to send content that would not be in compliance with Amateur Radio regulations.

What you are trying to do is actually much more of a DD-WRT question than it is a BBHN question because it relates to configuring your router rather than the mesh node. The documentation on the DD-WRT site will likely be able to provide much more detailed information than this short snippit should you require more details.

1) DD-WRT router would need a static route to 10.x to point towards the mesh node IP address on the interface the mesh node is connected.

2) DD-WRT would need its dns server configured to forward queries to the mesh node:

http://cybernetnews.com/local-internal-dns-ddwrt/

http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/docs/setup.html

"Using special servers.

Dnsmasq has the ability to direct DNS queries for certain domains to specific upstream nameservers. This feature was added for use with VPNs but it is fully general. The scenario is this: you have a standard internet connection via an ISP, and dnsmasq is configured to forward queries to the ISP's nameservers, then you make a VPN connection into your companies network, giving access to hosts inside the company firewall. You have access, but since many of the internal hosts aren't visible on the public internet, your company doesn't publish them to the public DNS and you can't get their IP address from the ISP nameservers. The solution is to use the companies nameserver for private domains within the company, and dnsmasq allows this. Assuming that internal company machines are all in the domain internal.myco.com and the companies nameserver is at 192.168.10.1 then the option server=/internal.myco.com/192.168.10.1 will direct all queries in the internal domain to the correct nameserver. You can specify more than one domain in each server option. If there is more than one nameserver just include as many server options as is needed to specify them all."

Where the server line is something like "server=/local.mesh/nodeipaddress"     --- all DNS access would have to be done as http://nodename.local.mesh for this to work

So, I am a bit unique in some regards.

The only wireless device I have at the moment that I use at my house is actually an iphone (ignore the mesh nodes they are all wired up as well)

In my case I do the static routes as needed to access the mesh nodes.  I never force them to be saved however so every reboot they go away.

I also do a lot of multi-homing where I have a single computer with 2 network ports plugged into my global network and my mesh network.  This is a bit of an 'advanced' setup however and I wouldn't expect to see many people use this.  This involves a 2nd interface and static routes.

Static routes while more work when you need them, would limit the amount of traffic that could go over the mesh when it is plugged into your network to only that device

I woudl be worried about viruses which love to scan wide segments  and if trying to go against 10.x  could manage to spread to other systems in the network (I remind everyone again treat the mesh as insecure)

Really it becomes a matter of choice on how you want to setup your network, what risks you are willing to accept, etc.