Greetings all!
ian at SussexNetShare
to introduce ourselves and possibly put in what we think we want to
get out of it!! It seems we are all working to a goal.......Is this
the right way forward?
helen...@googlemail.com
Nick CLANNET
which has been dead these last 3 years.
Our ' end product' lags well behind mainstream ADSLmax which we are
not able to deliver over prism 2 11b radios.
In addition we need to move to new radios as the supply of prism2 is
very limited. We are unable to continue with locustworldPRO and
atheros radios as the licence fee of £150 a node is prohibitive in
almost all our business models and it is an all or nothing decision
(because atheros will not mesh with prism in MESHAP) meaning a further
large investment in all new radios.
The free flow of information on the locustworld email listing had
nearly ceased and was often subject to censorship.
If the frank exchanges over the last few days on the meshAP listing
are anything to go by, then there are folks out there with all the
same problems as we face and are also looking for a route forward:
LETS HEAR FROM YOU NOW
What I want to get out of this is to try to combine all our efforts to
find routes forward and discuss possible solutions, share ideas and
develop them. Everyones efforts are multipied by sharing.
We have been experimenting with atheros cards in OSS and have a
reasonbale grip on what can be done with them and can share this. We
are also trying to give ourselves more bandwidth by spliting the
backhaul onto a seperate channel in a twin radio arrangement as this
gives much improved latency and speeds. This has given us some
practical experience on deploying these 'remote gateways'.
I would like to know what others have achieved with OSS and more about
wwdrt and practical expeience with Merachi or indeed, how we push what
we already have in the excellant MESPAP/WIANA integrated solution to
which we still have loyality and a large investment in knowledge.
At this moment I am thinking we start by building out a ddwrt mesh
along side our current MeshAP's to provide the second radio for
backhaul. ie This might combine the advantages of a high speed
backbone but keep wiana. All meshAP's would then become gateways.
That was my starter for 10
Nick
On Sep 23, 9:41 pm, ian at SussexNetShare <iansal...@gmail.com> wrote:
Helen Anderson
Quote
We are unable to continue with locustworldPRO and
atheros radios as the licence fee of £150 a node is prohibitive
UnQuote
When was this price given?
Is this the current price? We were on pro over a year ago, and when we looked at renewing I am sure it wasn't this expensive. Even when we did take pro we managed to get LW down on there initial quoted price.
At the moment tho' what pro gives isn't what we need.
I see Don is still talking about Qorvus, anyone know if this supports g or is worth looking at?
--
www.wireless.southwitham.net
Skype:helenander
8442...@voiptalk.org
Nick Hall
ne0e0n
just a quick hello from Guy here in sunny Withernsea :)
Neoeon still uses 70 odd OSS meshboxes to cover some 1000 sq kms of
East Yorkshire mainly serving people who are in a notspot (and still
plenty of those - -if anything the problems with ADSL seem to get
worse hereabouts over time... what seems to be happening is that when
a few early adopters are on a long/flaky lines then ADSL will work
slowly but once the neighbours sign up the service dies for everyone :
(
- on a positive note some of the meshboxes are now entering their
fifth year of service so I can't fault LW on selecting the miniITX as
a solid hardware platform!
We've been playing with Meraki since March - the idea (ex MIT Roofnet)
is great and the mesh implementation has been tested with up to 6
nodes successfully... problem with Meraki is their business model -
20% rake-off (gross!) then ISP gets paid a month or two in arrears and
Meraki owns the customer billing relationship... you can reflash the
meraki mini hardware with CUWIN and perhaps ddwrt (I haven't trid this
as yet - but SebG reckons the kit is nearly identical to the fonera)
but you lose the meraki-mesh functionality... allegedly the hardware
is available in Taiwan for sub $20
Just briefly, I see two key bottlenecks - first is the ingress-egress
currently limited by ADSL (which can be sometimes improved by bonding
MLPPP or otherwise); second is a fundamental deficiency caused by
using ethernet thinking for a free space environment specifically the
collision/detection/avoidance mechanism that allows each radio to
communicate with its peers.
The latter issue has been solved commercially by third generation mesh
suppliers to create a flat layer 2 network space and crucially to
allow 16-35 Mbps symmetric across 10 hops.
Sounds great eh?
Only fly-in-ointment is the cost is an order of magnitude greater that
a meshbox (£3k-£5k per node!) but each node will support 500+ users.
The ddwrt mesh as backhaul sounds very interesting - I guess my main
concern is what hardware platform is used as I've found the cheap
original Linksys kit (including the GL model) to be flaky in terms of
continuous reliable running.
Of course you can load ddwrt onto x86 boxes with suitable atheros
hardware...
bye for now,
Guy
www.neoeon.com
www.broadband.coop
Richard B
network in north Leicestershire. No longer a not-spot as BT acted
quickly when the development agency approved our initial funding.
We currently use Locust World Mesh - the PRO version (v32.2072) mainly
- on mini-ITX boxes. We think LW did a great job getting the concept
off the ground but the lack of a truly open source approach and
continuing problems have been a disappointment. The period for which
we paid has expired. With and only around 50 members, 5 feeds and 15
nodes we don't expect to pay for continuing upgrades and support at
anything like the quoted £10 per node per month (taken from the
registration website).
I am keen on the open source and free software concepts, and have
contributed in a small way. So far as our mesh is concerned I would
like to migrate to a truly open source system with a greater
throughput and lower incidence of outages than currently experienced
by our members. This (or compatible systems) should run on mini-ITX
boxes, suitable Linux based routers etc. For our purposes basically
fixed routes with a maximum of three wireless hops (including those to
clients) should be fine. Meshing for management proposes would however
be desirable for when a feed goes down and we need another path to
investigate the problem.
Dave Phelan
On Sep 24, 1:09 am, Nick CLANNET <hallclan...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I feel its time to look very seriously at alternatives to MeshAP OSS
> which has been dead these last 3 years.
piertopier.net (Brighton beach) has abandoned Mesh AP completely. Our
last MeshAP node was replaced with an off the shelf AP running dd-wrt
last month. We don't have a lot of meshing (and what we did have was
problematic) but we've gained a lot more stability using a mix of
Pebble Linux and OpenWRT with WDS where needed.
Dave Ph
beeman
mesh, will that be a DD-WRT mesh as per latest releases (using OLSR)
or a WDS spine for backhaul (as per SWBB?)
On Sep 24, 1:09 am, Nick CLANNET <hallclan...@googlemail.com> wrote:
Tom Anderson
Nick halln@clannet.co.uk
I was thinking WDS but now I'm thinking of returning to Qcode mesh and
not make the backwards step to WDS, but then keep the air as clean as
possible by changing channel each hop. So, for instance use Ch6 for
clients only and alternate ch1-ch 13 at each hop so no hop losses from
our experience. We are very lucky, in some ways, to be in the country
as it is pretty free of major interference and largely we regulate the
channel used ie for householders AP's we decide channel as we control
automac.
I am seriously thinking of moving backhaul to 11a as our main gateways
do suffer with some interfernence which can only get worse. I would
estimate they are seeing 3 times as many AP's than a year ago.
I realy dont think the extra costs of radios is an issue. I can
purchase the radio cards I want fro £10 (atheros 5213 chipset) and
mini PCI holders for a fiver.
Thanks Tom for the codes for adding a second ethernet, that is REALLY
useful.
Nick
> > > the right way forward?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Adrian (ADR Communications)
adjusted to run every 1min to bring the splashpage backup on and LW node.
Adrian
Hi beeman,
Nick
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.13.32/1032 - Release Date: 26/09/2007
20:20
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.13.33/1036 - Release Date: 28/09/2007
15:40
Adrian (ADR Communications)
In Root
Issue the command "crontab -l" this will show the cron jobs listed, at the
bottom you will see the splashtest cron jon.
*/30 * * * * /hj/splashtest >/dev/null 2>&1
You can edit the time of the job from 30mins to what you like, I have
changed our's to 2mins this solves most issues.#
edit command is "crontab -e" then use VI commands toe delete and insert etc.
Regards Adrian
Adrian
Hi beeman,
Nick
Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.13.35/1039 - Release Date: 29-09-2007
21:46
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.13.35/1040 - Release Date: 30-09-2007
21:01
Ian Salmon
Meraki have completely revamped their structure!! Annoyed a lot of people!!
So groups like us desperately trying to reflash with openwrt
http://forums.meraki.com/viewforum.php?f=13
Then we hear of BT jumping into bed "so to speak" with Fons!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7027871.stm
Yes interesting times ahead. Our group has well over 100 MeshAp and about 50
meraki. We had a solitary Fonero but gave up on that! Our aim as I think we
still see it!!! Is to get a decent OSS together to reflash both our merakis
and Meshboxes so that they can work together. We are more than happy to work
with other groups on this ideal. OSS has got to be the way forward. We cant
rely on LW, Meraki, Fonero, Qorvus or whoever!!! Reading the many forums
.... there are a lot of operators out there really wanting to get something
on the road and who are feeling very let down at the mo!
Enjoy!
Ian