[Commotion-dev] OpenWRT trunk r33202 does PSK-encrypted adhoc on ar71xx

[Will Hawkins]

Thanks for bumping this, Ben. I will take a deeper look later this week.

Will

On 05/09/2013 03:07 PM, Ben West wrote:
> Bumping this thread.  Below is more info about the original patch that
> appeared to get ball rolling on IBSS-RSN encryption.  There is also
> contact info for Antonio Quartulli, who seems to be a good person to ask
> about issues with nodes not reliably authenticating themselves upon
> joining an encrypted mesh.
>
> https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2012-January/013509.html
>
> *Antonio Quartulli* ordex at autistici.org
> <mailto:openwrt-devel%40lists.openwrt.org?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BOpenWrt-Devel%5D%20%5BPATCH%5D%20mac80211%3A%20provide%20IBSS%20RSN%20support%20for%20ath5k&In-Reply-To=%3C1326711999-20522-1-git-send-email-ordex%40autistici.org%3E>
>
> On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 6:04 PM, Ben West <ben at gowasabi.net
> <mailto:ben at gowasabi.net>> wrote:
>
>     Hi All,
>
>     Sharing some results from a couple weeks of surfing the choppy waters
>     of recent OpenWRT trunk: I have been able to get 2 UBNT ar71xx nodes
>     to mesh with PSK-encrypted adhoc, aka IBSS RSN.
>
>     You can even configure the encryption in /etc/config/wireless,
>     provided you use hostapd and wpa_supplicant packages instead of wpad
>     or wpad-mini.
>
>     Known so far:
>     - The meshconfig tool bundled w/ Commotion does not work at all,
>     likely due to significant changes made after trunk r31639 for netifd
>     support.  I unfortunately could not glean more info about this, since
>     nodes flashed w/ the commotionbase package atop r33202 trunk became
>     completely unresponsive.  I have a TTL/serial cable on order, to
>     hopefully learn more about this.
>     - Likewise, the freifunk-watchdog service (ffwatchd), as configured &
>     bundled w/ Commotion, doesn't seem to like an encrypted mesh.  I saw
>     it repeatedly restarting the wireless interfaces, so I removed that
>     pkg from the firmware images I was testing with.  I posted a query to
>     this list previously if anyone knows of documentation available for
>     ffwatchd.
>     - Although you can indeed specify "encryption psk" for the mesh VAP in
>     /etc/config/wireless, a bug with wpa_supplicant.sh causes that VAP to
>     lose its assigned IP address thereafter.  I had do "ifconfig wlan0
>     10.12.x.x" after bringing up the wireless to restore the IP address.
>     - "iw wlan0 station dump" suggests that nodes joining an encrypted
>     mesh do not get reliably "authorized," even when they are
>     "authenticated."  On the un-authorized node where I observed this, I
>     bringing its wlan0 down and then back up resolved this.
>     - My UBNT nodes were able to ping each other (even at 10ms intervals
>     using fping) OK for days, until a power blip reset them.
>
>     Unknown, so far:
>     - Whether this works for ath5k too.  Trunk r33202 does not appear to
>     boot at all on ath5k, although recent patches submitted to trunk do
>     explicitly mention IBSS RSN support for ath5k.
>     - What sort of speed penalty this imposes, or if the PSK encryption is
>     done in hardware or software on either platform.
>     - Whether ar71xx/ath5k driver will let you add more VAPs (encrypted or
>     not) to a physical interface already broadcasting an encrypted mesh.
>     - Whether hostapd-mini and wpa-supplicant-mini will correctly
>     configure IBSS RSN, too.
>
>     It looks like much thanks for getting IBSS RSN to a functional state
>     on Atheros chips should go to Antonio Quartulli, who is involved with
>     the BATMAN-based project http://open-mesh.org.
>
>     --
>     Ben West
>     http://gowasabi.net
>     ben at gowasabi.net <mailto:ben at gowasabi.net>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Ben West
> http://gowasabi.net
> ben at gowasabi.net <mailto:ben at gowasabi.net>
> 314-246-9434
>
>
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