[Commotion-discuss] Some pre-experimentation mesh hardware inquiries

Andrew Reynolds andrew at opentechinstitute.org
Wed Feb 27 14:47:04 UTC 2013


That one might be close. It looks like it's supported by OpenWRT under
the ar71xx target we've had good luck with. The limiting factor will be
onboard storage. The Commotion PR3 release is 4.1 MB, and it looks like
the TL-MR3020 only has 4 available.

-andrew

On 02/27/2013 09:36 AM, Christian Huldt wrote:
> Is it possible to configure olsrd on openwrt on something cheap like
> TP-Link TL-MR3020 to join a commotion mesh?
> 
> Andrew Reynolds skrev 2013-02-27 12:59:
>> Hello!
>>
>> We tend to focus on Ubiquiti routers for convenience. We have a lot of
>> them for our own networks because they're reliable and hard to brick.
>> Commotion should theoretically run on any OpenWRT-compatible hardware
>> (http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start). The biggest problem we've run into
>> is that some of the smaller routers don't have enough storage for all
>> the Commotion packages. I believe there's a minimal Commotion
>> configuration somewhere in the developer archives. I will see if I can
>> find it.
>>
>> The setup you describe sounds pretty straightforward. The routers should
>> just mesh, and there are a couple of ways to add a laptop/fileserver.
>> You could run the x86 live image, which will turn the laptop into a very
>> powerful openwrt node, or you could connect the laptop and router via
>> ethernet cable. Depending on your OS, this might be a good opportunity
>> to test the new Linux or OS X clients. They're still very rough, but
>> they might fit in a test network.
>>
>> We are in the process of packaging and testing a new Commotion release,
>> which will add a lot of user interface improvements, as well as some
>> security features.
>>
>> Finally, you can find all of our source code, including packages that
>> haven't been added to the official release, on our github account
>> (https://github.com/opentechinstitute).
>>
>> Keep us posted on your progress.
>>
>> -andrew
>>
>>
>> On 02/27/2013 06:31 AM, Mikael Nordfeldth wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>> I'm involved in Umeå Hackerspace, northern Sweden, and we're thinking
>>> (like so many others) that a wireless mesh network would be great to
>>> have in our neighbourhood. I've been looking at both Commotion and the
>>> Byzantium project (http://project-byzantium.org/) for inspiration,
>>> technology and software.
>>>
>>> From what I can tell Commotion currently has OpenWRT builds for some of
>>> the Ubiquiti hardware and from what I can tell from documentation this
>>> is a working solution albeit somewhat hacky and developer-oriented. I
>>> have a little bit of personal budget to kickstart this project and buy
>>> hardware to experiment with. My first test scenario is to at least have
>>> three APs/laptops working in a mesh to connect an apartment a couple of
>>> blocks away from the source internet connection.
>>>
>>> Any experience-based suggestions on which hardware is best suited,
>>> general tips for putting up a network like this etc. for someone who's
>>> only used two OpenWRT boxes to "bridge" before?
>>>
>>> And a bonus inquiry: are there any efforts (or ideas on how much effort
>>> it would mean) to put Commotion firmware onto common units like the
>>> Linksys WRT54GL and such?
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Commotion-discuss mailing list
>> Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
>>
> 
> 


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