[Commotion-dev] Super Node

[Seamus Tuohy]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello all,

Here at Commotion HQ we are underway on the construction of
plug-and-play application suites for communities, collaboration, and
circumvention. We wanted to let everyone know how we are moving ahead
on this so that any application we implement is not duplicating the
work that we know is going on among other groups. We would love to
hear what other groups are doing so that we can see how we can
contribute while we work from our end on this project. We are  adding
a new sub-project to the development sites openwrt project this week.
The project will be titled Super Node.

We have decided to build on an OpenWRT x86 package so that existing
OpenWRT development will not have to be duplicated, and so
applications can be ported over to higher powered routers as they
become capable and available. We have started working on getting the
current live-USB x86 image to fully run the current  release on our
test net-books, and then begin the process of documenting the package
structure and testing compatibility with other devices so that anyone
can begin to add their favorite programs and get the ?super node?
working.

Our field team is starting talks with the existing communities to map
out the services that they need. Once we receive the field reports
from these  conversations we will begin implementing applications for
the Community server. Until that point we will be putting together a
collaboration server image  that will allow a node to advertise an
ether-pad, wiki, chat-client, and file-server locally.

Service advertisement and discovery options are truly where we need to
start a larger conversation. We have had a few meetings and informal
discussions  with various people in the mesh-tech communities. We have
decided to use the International Community Wireless Summit to engage
with mesh developers for  various communities and protocols to build
an overview of what is being done, and try to forge a path that will
be protocol agnostic enough to maintain as  Commotion grows to support
and route between various protocols.  We would like to keep an open
channel on the list as people put their own service
discovery/advertisement mechanisms in place so that we can make sure
that whatever we implement can easily be ported to.

The Super Node project is  implementing a mesh services section on the
captive portal that will allow each router to advertise nearby
services. For those who saw the HOPE9  demo, it will be similar to
that. This will also allow us to advertise the Internet (when
available), bug/contact forms, and the mesh visualizer as services
themselves.  This system will be built upon the existing UCI
interface within LuCI. This way we can allow for any service
advertisement protocol that is decided upon to plug into our front end.

We have a lot of notes starting to take form in the development notes
section of the Wiki. I would love to hear ideas, suggestions, and
critique both on the  list and on the wiki.


s2e
OTI
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJQK9N5AAoJEKG7t1KxMTwvfaUH/38F8sLWWR5MCEuSFc3Qs7zk
834j9q38lGNAl9sS5kVeA/T4FNIfCctjb7CedjwGker4xSjb3svgJFdCAWts9sks
OrScQCAUDQFD7LkQRzRB7MgwWcj7PlIMSZX7cldmjjfa8zdpburpO97pkAhGnm7n
N6/JeHgJXbwm5z0kV09Q5T/37+FZ0kbQKQfT8/SS/eaOlLlSS/eArzZdbJ6KhwRt
Oek731aSFvQiA8BmBBcG9mkMvzVlX14UUhWCZDalcia39wXoLI04mqpSMDAhHePt
Q+zxgG1H++uopPIYVtJcxth9nYtBp85Clm3MXdBwwnXrgXIA6oopK1YbKNI+tJM=
=EMdJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----