http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/documentation/186-ubnt-fw-release-101

HELLO ALL,

New to this and i have 2 bullet m2 set up and they talk to each other.   I want to  have 1 bullet share my network resources.  SO I have the MESH Gateway checked and have WAN set on a static IP address and filled all of that out and plugged it into my unmanaged switch.  since this is testing i know it might share internet  but I am ok with that as i am the onlyone  working on this in my basement..   but it seems my setup doesn't work..   i plug in my laptop to my other bullet setup in the other room and  no go.    any thoughts ?

Thanks...  

PS looking to set up 3 points in WOODFORD COUNTY USA  anyone want to help from this area?

Make sure you are in DIRECT mode and your using the computer not the node IP

Also make sure the windows firewall is off.

When you are on the same router you are on the same subnet.

 Even when you set it to allow local connections when you are on diffrent routers it's basically the same as the remote node being from a untrusted area and it's blocked.

looking for local interest in Finksburg/Westminster/Gamber ... etc area.  Am in the process of installing the software on several Linksys Routers.  Interested parties please email me at QRZ address

Jim

looking for local interest in Finksburg/Westminster/Gamber ... etc area.  Am in the process of installing the software on several Linksys Routers.  Interested parties please email me at QRZ address

Jim

looking for local interest in Finksburg/Westminster/Gamber ... etc area.  Am in the process of installing the software on several Linksys Routers.  Interested parties please email me at QRZ address

Jim

looking for local interest in Finksburg/Westminster/Gamber ... etc area.  Am in the process of installing the software on several Linksys Routers.  Interested parties please email me at QRZ address

Jim

OK, it's obviously late in the day but so far no joy using the MESH to network 4 computers with N1MM for Field Day.  I've reduced it to two to simplify debugging.  If I plug them both into the same router, they are fine.  Move one to a different router and adjust the IP address in the N1MM table and nothing.  I also cannot ping the PC across the mesh.  I can ping to the LAN ports across the mesh.

Been talking to K5KTF but he uses N3FJP so it is a different set up.

Has anyone successfully migrated to the new mesh firmware and gotten it working?  If so, can you send me setup details.  I am clearly running out of daylight to use the mesh.  I'd hate to go back to the long cables running around.

Thanks in advance.

Jim NQ5L

(email directly at nq5l "at" arrl.net if you like)

All ports to talk TO the node are doubled.
HTTP= 8080
SSH=2222

This is from back when NAT mode was default, if you wanted to have a server BEHIND the node, you would want to port-forward 80/22/etc, so we use the doubled ports IN the node.

73

I cannot claim to be an antenna guru, but from reading the book "Linksys WRT54G Ultimate Hacking", (p272); Diversity can interfere with reception when the antennas are not matching. Success sending, but failure receiving, is not unexpected. Two solutions suggested in the book include: 1. hacking the hardware to eliminate Diversity, or 2. turning off Diversity using nvram commands. The latter is recommended, because it is reversible.

I am still trying to determine how to access the router to send the nvram commands after setup, as the standard SSH port seems unavailable under version 1.0.0.  Anybody have any success?

Success!!!!

The last issue was firefox was reseting when I tried to do the firmware update.  Chrome loaded the firmware with no issue.

Of course no nodes close enough to connect with as of yet.  I will be setting up several others in the days to come.  Now just need to find the page to be added to the map.

Billy - W5PL

I was in a similar situation a while back, I had a Linksys that came with OpenWRT that I wanted to install BBHN on.  I "couldn't get there from here" so my path was to install ddWRT and from the admin page on ddWRT I was able to install BBHN.

Looks like you're already there, I'd give that a shot first.

Mark K5LXP

Albuquerque, NM

Update:

I did get dd-wrt to load.

My latest ebay purchase came with Broadcom router firmware loaded.

Of course the MESH firmware fails the validity check and will not load.  I have been looking at the CFE methods and am not quite sure how to get a bootable router into CFE mode.

Any suggestions?

regards,
Billy
W5PL

Besides just the adhoc issue of Android phones it is also wise to consider that could/would occur with the described scenario.

1) RF Range of handset:  RF Range of a Cell Phone will be limited compared to that of a mesh node. The antenna on board is shielded by the person, phone case, glass, etc. This reduces effective range of a phone.

2) Battery Life:  Normally cellphones turn off the wifi when a user is not touching the phone. To remain an active part of the mesh the phone would need the wifi on at all times. This will kill the battery fast.

Ignoring the battery life and assuming its only connected when a user has their hand on the device. Depending how your connected to the mesh at that point there is the potential to pollute a good portion of the RF space with duplicate information.  Assuming the local node is a high gain unit of some sorts and that the phone is needing to use that unit to receive signals from a far away node it will end up broadcasting the call across the full coverage area of the high power station  that is on the local site as it repeats from the remote node to the local phone.   This would take up RF space from other users for miles on packets that only need to go hundreds of feet. Now if the mesh is a lot of very small very limited coverage nodes than this becomes less of an issue but so far all networks I have seen deployed seem to follow this longer distance model

This same issue of duplicate packets also occur if one uses a pi with a small thumb size dongle and are relying on a node already being local to get out to the world.  At that sort of scenario a hardline, or an AP on channel 11 becomes more useful to keep the mesh channel as clear as possible.

This might seem like overkill to think about right now, but in a few years may be a significant issue if a lot of setups like this pop up.  If they follow a hub and spoke type model like we need to do out here in San Diego with hilltops acting as repeater sites.  A field node (spoke) repeating a packet for the use of a user 200feet away from it  can tie up the channel for the entire area (the hub is hearing the repeat.) While is is perfectly fine when no other path could exist, when we have the ability to move it off channel this becomes something we should do.

Hello Mark,

It sounds like we may be closer to the same thoughts than it sounds.

The situation described of just plugging in a password on WIFI and getting instructions is basically what hotels do when you visit them (Captive Portal) --- This was what was talked about earlier in the thread.   You would not want this on the mesh device itself because it could interfere with traffic from locally connected and automated software and increase the load on the node itself.  On an access point like you had walking around at HamCom though you would.   This also gets away from the need to tell them where the node is at as that page could do everything when it captures them, aka they don't even need to know to visit your callsign  it just happens on first load.

I would also say the BBHN interface, while not having a lot of images (NOTE: we are close on the amount of flash space on nodes --- Images have to be considered carefully as to how they are used to keep us under the 4mb limit on the Linksys devices) is very similar to an existing router  where you get a splash screen (status page)  and can drill down after that to what you need..  Everythign is only 2 clicks deep at the moment. You still need to know how to get to the splash screen (just like a standard router) so no real difference there.

PS:  Please make sure your node also runs on port 8080 as well if its going to be connected to general meshes.  All the links from the interface will push towards 8080 and if the web interface is only on port 80 users will just get could not connect pages.

It's a great idea.  

I've heard from a fairly reliable source that Androids are sort of booby trapped to not go into ad-hoc mode.  Maybe someone has figured out a workaround.  The wifiexplorer android app seems to do it, so maybe there is a way.

I'm in WAY over my head here in terms of putting something like that together myself.

A little googling of android OLSR seems promising. 

http://www.olsr.org/?q=olsr_on_android for instance.

Funny, the screenshot images I posted above show up under Firefox both in windoze and ubuntu, but not under Internet Exploder.

There were a couple of folks out in the fleamarket at Hamcom that took my picture with the pedestrian portable mesh but I don't know who they were. Maybe they'll float up on a ham forum somewhere.  I was stopped and quizzed about mesh by a number of folks and having the WAP capability I was able to connect with my smartphone and demo the various pages on the spot.  Not much activity to see on Friday but on Saturday there were a number of nodes that showed up on the neighbor list.

I don't agree with the premise that if you're not savvy enough to operate the mesh as-is, you shouldn't be operating the mesh.  Consider the many things in our lives that have "no user serviceable parts" yet are incredibly complex.  Something as ubiquitous as a smartphone even children can operate successfully.   For most users of wifi, you connect to a visible wifi network, maybe put in a password and that's it.  I see no reason why there can't be a simple UI as a (configurable) first layer for general users, then if you need to muck with the mesh innards, those facilities are there too.  I don't think there should necessarily be a default interface, but to leave that up to the user to create an index page that makes sense for their mesh and what they need it to do.

An example I would use is the DSL router I have.  When you first log into it all you get is a splash screen with a few plainly obvious function/status icons to click on.  From there you can drill down as deep as you want.  But if all you want is to view or manipulate basic functions, you don't have to go beyond the first layer or two.

I get the port 80/8080 reasoning but I think that's the logic of a programmer/engineer and not a user.  Using port 80 should be the on-node default.  Courtesy of W9YA and the modified files he supplied I have my nodes set up for port 80.  If port 80 needs to go to an external server, it's a simple change.  I believe the use of an external server for port 80 would be the exception in most node deployments.

So in the case of my pedestrian portable node no one had to know to connect to "localnode:8080" which is a foreign concept to casual computer users, it ended up being k5lxp-32 into the browser address line, and that's it.  Much easier to recognize and use.  I know this is kind of picking nits when at this stage there are very few mesh networks in place but the easier it is to use, the more interest it will garner.  Today BBHN looks very "experimental" at this point and possibly intimidating to some who might otherwise try it.

I embarked on the mesh journey for as much an education in networking as the use of mesh itself.  I don't believe most hams would share that reasoning, but might be interested in trying a node that did a few basic functions with little user intervention.    Start with a level of basic functionality and let the user grow into it. 

Mark K5LXP

Albuquerque, NM