<html><head><style>body{font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px}</style></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; color: rgba(0,0,0,1.0); margin: 0px; line-height: auto;">Hi Josh</div><div>
<div>
<p dir="ltr">Thank you so much for replying.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I had replied this morning but got stuck in the
moderation queue. I’ve updated my reply and I’m sending it again
now.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I've been thinking over and over about what to do all
week and today I've been getting a little lost as nothing really
seems to work. Your reply comes at the perfect time. Thank you.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Thank you very very much for your testing on the pico
station and Ben for your copy of airos firmware 5.5.2. I tried
downgrading to it and then made the switch over to cw firmware and
it worked!!! I rebooted the pico and the config is still there!
You’re super awesome! I still have to figure out how to get it to
recognise the dhcp-enabled lan i’m connecting it to via ethernet as
it doesn’t seem to get a lease and if i connect to it via wifi it
says it’s not providing gateway. I’ve read that the mesh and wifi
layers should be separate [and I was actually looking to mesh over
5ghz and wifi over 2.4ghz (see tplink section in paragraph below)]
so I’m thinking of all the possible setups but I’d need to be able
to use the ethernet port of the pico either as in a wan style to
provide gateway to it [only for internet, no wired meshing ever],
or to use it as a lan port and attach an access point so that it
can handle the wifi layer, leaving the pico to only provide the
mesh layer. What do you guys think? How important is it to keep the
layers separate? Is the mesh on 5ghz and wifi over 2.4ghz idea
sound / realistic / desirable?</p>
<p dir="ltr">About the tplink: I'm very lucky you have the same
router at home Ben. I've installed openwrt but was struggling to
figure out how to get the 5ghz part working. I'm not sure why I
didn't find any info related to ac not working on the openwrt site.
I've found info about two different v2 models but I seem to be just
under the serial number threshold [assuming that letters come after
numbers in true hexadecimal style]. The idea was to mesh over 5ghz
and create WiFi over 2.4ghz so it's definitely important to have
the former working perfectly. In any event could you please send me
the image you are using at home? That would be fantastic. I can't
seem to find it anywhere!</p>
<p dir="ltr">Do you think I should look into a similar router
without ac to be on the safe side?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Since I started writing this reply I've taken a look
at the other mail where you suggested the Detroit community
technology project and I am trying to piece things together to
figure out the best approach but I'm really confused.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I've spent six hours the other night following the
metamesh documentation [written for a picostation] but I can't seem
to adapt the configuration to a more complex router like the tplink
because of it having both a Wan and a Lan port set.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The bottom line is that I'd love to use commotion. If
I get the picostation working with lan and / or wan functionality I
will have to evaluate whether it's a sound investment to try
another bullet and yet another picostation [maybe on 5ghz as i
mentioned earlier]. If instead I had an image for a tplink router I
can actually purchase here in Italy or knew how to compile it for
said router it would make things very easy. I wouldn't be able to
install it maybe on all the various routers I'm finding in people's
homes but as they're all mostly proprietary and maybe locked down
they don't have an option to flash firmware via Web interface so I
wouldn't know how to make the switch to openwrt or anything else
anyway on those devices.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Metamesh and other projects like qmp that work on top
of standard openwrt installations need a non ac router at this
point and I need to figure out how to configure a router that is
not a picostation but one with Wan, Lan, and two WiFi
interfaces.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I really think our setup should be fairly normal and
common: lots of houses distributed in an open area, soon we'll have
fiber and I'd love for all 300 of us to just get 4 contracts and
share everything instead of buying 300 of those contracts everyone
for himself [that's why I really need to show this works now], use
existing infrastructure as much as possible [home routers, at least
as access points if i can’t install cw / openwrt on them so that
they can actually mesh] and ease of installation with cross
compatibility. I think that meshing over 5ghz and WiFi-ying over
2.4ghz is the way to go since I need WiFi to enter houses and have
good strength and so on. If I have to replace routers and APs I
will but I need to know what works with openwrt and if I should
keep my hopes up for commotion or I should use something else
provided I find how to do so for non ubiquiti devices. It’s also
true that if cw and openwrt + olsr are compatible i won’t be forced
to take sides right away at least.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate
it and will definitely send you the donation as promised plus
recurring monthly donations if the project takes off. I hope you
have that firmware for the tplink and maybe some ideas to point me
in the right direction. I’m starting to feel it can work but need
your help to figure it all out. Thank you.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Nicolas</p><div class="quote"><blockquote class="quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div><style type="text/css">
/*<![CDATA[*/
body{font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px}
/*]]>*/
</style></body></html>