Hi Duffy,

Look at fab-corp.com titanwirelessonline.com and l-com.com, They have good dishes/ants, enclosures, etc.

73

Jim

Amazon and Newegg have the GLs new for $50 right now. You can find them used for less. Every model of the GL works fine. They can be converted in minutes to HSMM-MESH. 

I put one on the air yesterday in 30 minutes. Another should arrive today and I will have that on the air....at least in my house for now :-)

Duffy

Anyone recommended a good source for outside antennas, cable and amplifiers?

Thinking a nice high-gain Omni and an amp with a 30 foot run of cable.

Thoughts?

Duffy

There's a new version of the free networking book.  New meshers should read it.   Actually, most of the old meshers should read through it, too. 

It's not specifically about our HSMM-Mesh/Broadband-Hamnet system, but it's got a lot of practical information about networking in general.  It will answer a lot of the questions you'll ask when you start ham meshing.

Wireless Networking in the Developing World

It's called "Wireless Networking in the Developing World," but a lot of the info is very good for what we do.

Even if you think you're an expert, it's worth looking at.  

I'm an old networking guy from way back, and sort of thought there was nothing there for me, but once I worked my way through the stuff that's old hat to me, there's a lot of very useful stuff that's either new to me, has a more practical bent to it, or is a good refresher for parts of the art of networking that I haven't thought about in a while.

A fellow ham, Greg Mauere, KB9KPD, has roof rights at the Altius building 10421 South Jordan Gateway, South Jordan, UT as well as this building on the west edge of the Jordan river bench - 881 Baxter with decent visibilty of the south east corner of the Salt Lake valley.  I asked if it might be possible to put some HSMM-Mesh nodes on these building and he said he'd be open to it.   I toasted my Linksys.  Tossing this out to the broader group to see if anyone wants to pursue this.

-Lance

K7LQH

The concern is still potentially valid. 

With Broadband-Hamnet™, we are trying to port the mesh to a larger number of devices.  If the use of a hyphen makes it harder to port to work on a certain platform because one of the pieces of code doesn't like it, maybe it would make sense to drop the hyphen.

My current understanding of the latest firmware is that SSID "BROADCAST" cannot be disabled.

My assumption is that the idea behind this action is to ensure part 97 compliance via having your callsign as part of your ssid.

However, there is a major issue with this setup.

1) Phones/Laptops/etc Can see the nodes... (people will get curious and fiddle with them)

2) It is possible to connect a phone to one of these nodes and sniff the network for an ip address to access the nodes network

3) You CAN disable SSID broadcasting and stay part 97 Compliant.

Number 3 most people don't seem to know within the HSMM community. I am a wireless network security professional. (OSWP certified). When you have for example an access point with an SSID and disable the SSID Broadcast this does two things..

1) Standard computers/phones/devices will NOT see the network

2) Whenever the hardware is communicating IE:Meshed/linked the SSID is transmitted in the raw packet data....

In other words if you were looking at the raw data over the air (very easy to do under linux with a monitor mode capable wifi adapter) you can see the SSID of any access point (or HSMM node) that does not broadcast its SSID as long as the node is transmitting/communicating with another device.

I would strongly like to propose that an option to disable the broadcast function be added to the next firmware release, this will increase (security through obscurity) while continuing to be Part 97 compliant.

Windows computers and cellphones ( and many other devices ) will not look for wireless deivce, it will just wait until it sees a broadcast. With broadcasting turned off non-licensed individuals won't realize the network is there while the FCC/Licensed ham/and Technician could see the network if they so pleased, this simply hides the network from devices that shouldn't be attempting to connect anyway.

It in no way, shape, or form hinders the devices ability to function under part 97

HOWEVER, that being said, if you do a site-survey you will NOT see any node that is not broadcasting, you would need to add a manual-entry option where you could enter the SSID of the device/node you are connecting to.. Most stock routers have these capabilities.

I have been looking into upgrading the entire site (newer version with bug fixes, newer and better features, etc).

With that also involves looking at what newer modules plug in to the newer Joomla. A new forum with that is quite the possibility.

But that has all been a slow process, as real bill-paying work takes precedence, and I have been slammed since my last contract ended (I seem to work harder and longer when Im not "employed" :-) --personal consulting gig)

Plus with Field Day (now behind most of us, but I still need to tally the group's logs and submit), and Austin's Summerfest coming up, and working on the new GUI, and figuring out how to flash Cisco phones to work on the mesh (for use AT Summerfest), personal consulting clients, and 4 kids and a wife, I dont dare chip away at any more sleep time, which is currently only from 1am to 7am. Less than 6 hours for me is counter-productive (I have tried it quite a few times and know that to be a fact now)

Thanks for the feedback.

KTF

Is it possible to use underscore (or even better, text only) instead of hyphen in updated firmware SSID?  The reason I ask is that I'm trying to set up older out of service android devices to become part of the mesh and some of the software I'm attempting to do this with will not accept the hyphen as part of the SSID.  Just think how cool it would be to have low power, battery operated html server/APRS station/web cam/voip phone able to integrate easily into the network...

Has there been any consideration of upgrading to real forum software?

I don't mean to deminish in any way the work that has gone in to maintaining this site, I know what it takes as I run several web sites, but this forum software just plain sucks, particularly in the lack of navigation.

As far a s I can find, the only way to navigate away from any particular thread is to go clear back to the board index and dig down from there.

What is the status on the forthcoming firmware update? I have several nodes that I am preparing to deploy, but don't want to put them out just to have to go re-flash them.

This is a grant subsidized mesh project for typical consumer wifi enabled gear such as Android phones, laptops, iPhones and the like.

I wonder how it is they did not connect with the hsmm-mesh folks, or NW-Mesh. (Perhaps they did but I do not see familiar callsigns.)

http://project-byzantium.org/isc-milestone-three-amateur-radio-integration/ 

ISC Milestone Three: Amateur Radio Integration

Published on June 22, 2013 in Announcements.

The intended goal of our third development milestone was to integrate amateur radio functionality into Byzantium Linux.  A persistent technical limitation of our network architecture is inherent in consumer 802.11 wireless chipsets – their transmission range is limited due to the design of their associated antennae, relatively short battery life, and limited radiated power (200mW).  In practice, this means that wireless mesh networks may become segmented if one or more nodes are farther apart than the maximum theoretical range of 802.11 wireless.  Signal attenuation results in the inability of radios to detect one another’s traffic.  This limits the effectiveness of the network and hampers the ability of nodes to route traffic and synchronize. The higher transmission power allowed under amateur radio rules, superior transceiver quality, lower frequencies available, and greater antenna flexibility would help ameliorate these problems by providing increased range for independent nodes in the mesh.  Fewer nodes would then be required to prevent mesh segmentation, and usable broadcast sites would be less scarce.  Re-purposing existing amateur hand-held transceivers (HT’s) would be especially helpful, as most amateur radio operators already have several of these.

After doing some research we discovered that amateur radio could be used for data transmission.  Licensed amateur radio operators can use linear amplifiers, specialized antennae and other techniques to boost the effective strength of broadcasts on the 2.4GHz band, persuant to Part 97 rules.  There are also transmission modes which can be used to transmit text and binary data over a number of amateur radio bands (such as 70cm and 2m).  Our stated use case of temporarily repurposing portable devices as mesh nodes implied that investigating the use of hand-held amateur radio transceivers (HT’s) might be fruitful.  We concentrated on HT’s capable of accessing parts of the amateur spectrum earmarked for data communications to see if we could send and receive mesh traffic and break the distance barrier.
...

more at link

I also would like to recommend craigslist as well. Just search for "WRT54G*" and verify with the seller the correct version (http://hsmm-mesh.org/section-blog/37-hardware-faqs/101-supported-hardware.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G#WRT54G [check serial number with seller]). Now you got two ways to get meshing! :D

For those who swear they cant find any WRT's at reasonable prices...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000BTL0OA/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1371790647&sr=8-1

WRT54GL's  $24.82  and up.

Now quit whining and get meshing !!!

KTF