VillageTelco firmware for Huawei ADSL gateways (HG655b, HG658, HG510, HG520s) ?

[Răzvan Sandu]

Hello,

A major Romanian telephone company, ROMTELECOM (http://www.romtelecom.ro) uses its vast copper infrastructure to provide Internet acces over ADSL &VDSL to residential clients in the most remote areas of Romania (villages, etc.).
This commercial service is dubbed Clicknet (http://www.romtelecom.ro/internet.html)

The CPE equipment of choice comes from Huawei, namely  HG510, HG520s, HG655b and the more modern HG658 ADSL gateways (the latest is dubbed Smartbox in their docs).

http://www.romtelecom.ro/asistenta/asistenta-internet/manuale-de-utilizare

Is there any chance, please, to have the VillageTelco firmware ported to any of these routers in a foreseable future?

Acquiring the ability to easily flash free and mesh-capable firmware on these devices would VASTLY enhance Internet penetration in the rural areas of Romania (where no fiber or CATV links are available). It would also allow resilient mesh networking in dense city areas (blocks of flats containing a few hundreds apartments), limit cellular phone company dominance (which is overhelming in Romania...) and provide an uncensorable, whistleblower-friendly environment in a country that recently passed bills for PERSONAL DATA REGISTRATION of prepaid SIM cards users...


Best regards,
Răzvan

[T Gillett]

It is relatively easy to port the VT SECN firmware to a device that is supported by OpenWrt, and this includes a wide range of devices from many manufacturers.

However there are only a few Huawei devices represented in the OpenWrt Supported Hardware list (http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start#huawei) and none of the devices you mentioned are included.

However I don't really understand why you need to operate the VT SECN firmware on these particular Huawei devices though.

I would have thought that you would just use one of these devices as the Internet gateway for a mesh built from other devices such as the VT MP02, TP Link or Ubiquity devices, and connect to a mesh node with an Ethernet cable from the Huawei device.

The best approach may be to determine what types of wifi router equipment is most readily available locally and try to find a match, firstly with one of the devices for which we already have VT SECN firmware developed, or failing that, another device which is supported by OpenWrt and then port the firmware.

For preference, select a device with an Atheros chipset and at least 32MB RAM and preferably 8MB of Flash memory (although 4MB devices will work as basic mesh nodes under VT SECN).

Whatever device you select, make sure that you have a well understood method of installing the base OpenWrt Attitude Adjustment firmware as this is a pre-requisite to installing the VT SECN firmware.

Apart from the MP02, TP Link devices including WR842 and WDR3500 / 4300 and Ubiquity devices such as the Nanostation M2 meet this profile.

If you want devices that are ready to use in an outdoor environment eg mounted on rooftop to get a good 'view' of other mesh nodes, you should look at the Ubiquity devices, or perhaps consider building weatherproof enclosures for indoor devices such as the MP02 or TP Link devices. 

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[elektra]

Hi Răzvan –

the short answer to your question is: no.

The Villagetelco firmware is based on OpenWRT and the capabilities of the Atheros/Qualcomm WiFi chipsets supported by ath9k/atk5k drivers.

There are only few ADSL/VDSL modems fully supported by OpenWRT. A few Huawei routers work with OpenWRT but there is no support for ADSL/VDSL. But even if you give up the ADSL/VDSL functionality, only one Huawei model supported by OpenWRT has an Atheros/Qualcomm WiFi chipset.

My recommendation is to get a router dedicated and suitable for mesh networking. If money is absolutely critical and you want to drive down the cost, it is possible to get something for 15€ that can be flashed with a firmware that offers the mesh functionality of SECN, although with a tight space of only 4 MB in flash, non-detachable antennas and without outdoor housing. This can be the base for a DIY mesh router. With an outdoor housing it could go outdoors and with a soldering iron you can add external high-gain antennas. Clearly this is a solution for hardware hackers only. But hey, anyone with some skills and a soldering iron can become a hardware-hacker :)

Cheers,
Elektra

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[Răzvan Sandu]

Thank you both, tlg and elektra, for your kind answers!

Before seeing tlg's response, I've come to the same practical conclusions via a trial-and error process. I will use both MPs and locally-available hardware (mostly TP-Links) for setting up mesh networks. And I'll use the Huaweis as an Ethernet gateways for MPs.

Ubiquity devices are not very popular in Romania. Here we have mostly TP-Link, Linksys, D-Link, Huawei, Tenda, Netis (http://www.netis-systems.com) and Motorola.

Also, due to small prices and lack of official wireless certification (from Romanian authorities), it is pretty difficult to buy Mesh Potatos in Romania (especially as a business, especially in low quantities), but it won't be unfeasible.

marți, 8 iulie 2014, 07:25:38 UTC+3, tlg a scris:

However I don't really understand why you need to operate the VT SECN firmware on these particular Huawei devices though.

Huawei HG658 is a router ALREADY PROVIDED by Romtelecom to its residential clients, in mass quantities. It containswireless, many Ethernet ports and it has the option to participate in a FON scheme (https://corp.fon.com/en). I was simply exploring the possiblity to use this pre-existing hardware with VillageTelco's SECN, without adding a secondary wireless device; as I understand now, this is not feasible. The ADSL support would be critical, since the HG658 is connected to Romtelecom's copper infrastructure (ADSL).


The solution we seek is a mass one, mainly addressed to non-technical people in remote areas (villages), not to system administrators or hardware hackers. Of course it will be possible to send (from Bucharest) preconfigured devices to those areas/villages, in mass quantities, but for this task, the original MP-02 would be the optimal piece of hardware and we plan to use this.


Best regards,
Răzvan

[T Gillett]

Hi Razvan

This sounds like a great initiative.

Would you be able to outline some scenarios of how you envisage using the SECN mesh networks?

The sort of thing I am interested in is the scale of the mesh networks you are thinking of ie the number of nodes and the physical area that a typical mesh network would cover, as well as the number of users and the sorts of devices that are likely to be connected.

Are you anticipating using the telephony capabilities of the MP, or are you interested only in data networking?

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