How to get involved?

[Don]

I saw something on the hive website about the meshnet project. This is
something I have been thinking about for awhile. I have always thought
of a high speed pubic wireless network where everybody is
interconnect. Get rid of the isp and only pay for the services you
use. You could ditch your cell phone for a VoIP phone. There are a lot
of possibilities.

I have been doing 802.11 wireless for about 12 years. I have done a
lot of bridging solutions. I would like to get involved with this
project. Hopefully my experience will bring something to the project.
I might be able to borrow some antennas and cables from work to do
some testing with. I also have access to spec ans and other tools that
might help in setting this up. How do I get started?

I do have a few questions. The first concerns the platform chosen.
That linksys box is EOL. What is the availability? I was thinking of
using some sort of open source platform that somebody could build or
use an old pc as the mesh point. Something that's readily available,
low cost and easy to obtain. I know there is one source AP software
out there that can run on a pc. The trick would be to get wireless
nics that have external antenna connectors on them to be able to
connect outdoor antennas too. most nics are USB today. Maybe one could
be opened up and hacked. Anyways, just some thoughts and ideas.

On the corner of mcmicken and w Clifton on top of the Chicago gyro
building there is a cisco 1510 mesh AP. I have never seen any of it's
friends. Anybody know anything about that mesh network? Is it even a
mesh. It has the mesh backhaul antennas on it. Maybe itvis just
functioning as a hotspot. It's been up there for a few years.

[Dave Menninger]

Nice, to meet you Don! Glad to have you aboard.

We're still in the early stages, but it sounds like you are thinking
along the same lines we are and it sounds like you have a lot of good
knowledge.

Right now our plan looks like this:

Goal 1: Accomplish most basic meshing possible on some small number of
nearby physical nodes.
Goal 2: Figure out what to do next.

Several of us already have some WRT54G's lying around and since
they're fairly widely used we're starting there. I think we're
currently deciding what firmware / protocols to try out first. We are
leaning towards BATMAN, but OSLR might be good too.

I just found out this morning about a different piece of hardware that
looks pretty nice: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n and
they're fairly cheap: http://www.ebay.com/itm/200730884736

I was considering ordering one and putting OpenWRT on it and see if I
can get it to talk to my WRT54GL.

I know some others have also mentioned the Ubiquiti hardware which
looks pretty sweet, too.

Right now, we have been meeting irregularly at Hive13 meetings on
Tuesdays. Last time we talked we said we would try to get together
again when we have 2 or more nodes to try to mesh together. You
should stop by Hive13 on some Tuesday night if you're interested.

~Dave

[Dave Menninger]

On second thought, those tp-link pocket routers are cool for doing
little things like PirateBoxen, but not so great for larger scale
meshes because they don't have external antennae. Hmm.

~Dave

[Don]

There are a ton of the WRT54GLs on ebay. I will pick up one or couple to play with. I also have a couple Linksys routers sitting on my desk at work. I'll check what model they are. I don't think they are WRT54GLs though.

Funny, Ubiquiti's website was one of my first destinations after reading about the mesh project. They used to make some killer NICs. Extremely powerful radios. Looks like most of their stuff now is leaning more towards infrastructure. Probably good stuff but looks too commercial which means big $$$.

I think having an external antenna connector is key. The goal, at least in my opinion would be to have a router with an outdoor, external antenna that connects to the mesh and then connect that to your internal LAN in your home be it wired or wireless or both. A second radio with an outdoor antenna could also be setup as a hotspot. That is why I would be leaning toward a PC/Linux box as the base platform. You could stick 3 USB radios on it, 1 for mesh, 1 for hotspot, 1 for inside your house. Anyways, that is something to work towards. Just setting up a mesh with the WRT's would be a fun project.

I have been planning on coming to a hive meeting or at least a 2600 meeting. Just never got around to it. I travel a ton for work and I'm out usually during the middle of the week.