510pen: Creating a Community Wireless Mesh Network
Facilitated by Mark Burdett, 510pen
510pen is building an east bay community wireless mesh network. Mark will demonstrate the technology, and discuss the underlying technology as well as the innovations and challenges in bringing such a project to completion. Mark will also explain both the firmware and management dashboard, which are both open-source.
Session Notes
MESH NETWORKS
INCEPTION // HISTORY // USES invented for military use
battlefield urban environments comm doesn't have to go thru central command gps: track locations of other units
idirium satellite constellation
figures out what satellite is in range
oil refineries
thousands or millions of sensors being meshed to monitor systems low power reqs designed to sleep, mostly
exo laptop
one laptop per child every laptop is a router open source project with closed source mesh
510net playing with mesh routers with big antennas
very powerful in a small package
optimizing link state routing (OLSR) -- open source standard
802.11s -- draft for new mesh networking standard
everyone has their own implementation
Linux
FreeBSD
exo
might be the future when everything is compatible
work bidirectionally
can switch if internet access goes dead, technical issues
batman -- better approach to mobile ad hoc networking robin -- routing batman inside
firmware based on OpenWRT
(drawing of mesh network shown)
can have a private network if you want
OLSR
compatible to 15-20 routers off the shelf (open mesh routers $40/$25)
huge antenna is an add on
can expand # of compatible routers by using custom firmware
source code written in C
can have multiple gateways -- will use fewest hops and link quality
mathmatically deciding the best network and topology
can use matlab or octave to help plan a mesh network
can throttle connections
wouldn't recommend doing qos / traffic shaping
could use some kinf firewall device or linux box
updated OTA
bound by limits of wifi
usually around 200 feet for a non omni directional antenna can use directional antenna (up to 1mi range) can go 10's of km's easily with the right hardware line of sight / potential interference 2 radios one for the backbone / backhauling traffic to the internet one for local wireless coverage strong signal in one plane they tried to build a mesh network in santa rosa used meraki, who encourages people to charge, and then they skim off the top
dashboard
open source info about MAC addresses and bandwidth potential privacy issues hands out config data to the mesh routers firewall rules SSH password for root 510pen building their own dashboard (built on Kohana) another called OrangeMesh AGPL software can't have a private fork unless you have a private dashboard if you provide a community network you must adhere to AGPL
problems
trying to build a backbone on a freely available frequency
middle class areas have wifi in each house which creates interference
residential internet providers typically only allows for a household, not a shared service
sonic.net doesn't care
legal issues: kiddie porn, "terrorist" activities, other illicit activity
can setup to require accounts
community ISP, so theoretically legally protected
using too much bandwidth
scripts to knock them off for X amount of time
security concerns
SSH password for root from dashboard to router
use SSL certs
underserved areas
can share one connection for a block, building, etc
applied for broadband stimulus funding with Zero Divide 30 billion in proposals right now for 4 billion in funding "sustainable broadband adoption" telcos can respond to the proposals, but not to these proposals telcos are vehemently opposing proposals by smaller companies trying to provide broadband services supports models that the commuity comes up with one model: anchor node with a tip jar gateway or more structured payments focusing on really low income neighborhood in east oakland map online piedmont ave downtown oakland (19th and franklin) each owner has full admin control of their node building fully customized settings for each node
can be faster and cheaper than traditional setup
sign up at https://510pen.org/user buy hardware yourself (perhaps at openmesh.org, or others)