[Commotion-discuss] RPi Gateway

Wed Mar 25 01:12:53 EDT 2015

Hi Josh,

That was gold, thank you.  Solves the mystery for me of the differing
behaviour between my DNS server and an internet gateway.

I have a followup question which I think is probably pretty obvious, but
it's been a long time since I've had my head more convincingly around IP
routing:

   - my dns server RPi is currently static IP of 10.1.2.1, which is visible
   from its directly connected node, but can't be pinged/connected to from
   elsewhere.

   - My mesh nodes have mesh addresses that are 100.116.232.166,
   100.116.232.91, 100.116.233.5, and the like.  Local clients on these
   nodes are given IP addresses along the lines of 10.232.91.x by the node
   with mesh IP 100.116.232.91.

Would simply giving my RPi a static mesh address along the lines of
100.116.232.50 allow it to be seen from everywhere?

Again, apologies for the level of fog-headedness of this question.  I wear
many hats, and that one fell of.

Kind Regards,

Josh Harle
BSc (Hons) BA BFA PhD
____________________
http://joshharle.com
http://tacticalspace.org
ph: +61 (0)491 155 985

On 24 March 2015 at 23:15, Josh King <jking at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:

> Hi Josh,
>
> The nodes don't actually propagate DNS information on their own. Rather
> than using the DNS server that is passed by the DHCP lease, it uses one
> which is statically configured for that network profile, unless it is
> overridden (which is what is being done in part 2 of the instructions).
> Without that being overridden, by default the nodes use 208.67.222.222
> (an OpenDNS public server) as their upstream DNS server for things not
> on their local domain (.mesh.local).
>
> The captive portal included on the node runs on each individual node and
> so uses the node's own local DNS server (which in turn uses the IP
> address above for upstream queries). Part of configuring the nodes to
> use a different, centralized captive portal or access management
> solution would presumably could involve configuring them to use one or
> more DNS servers provided by the centralized captive portal/access
> management server, much as those are being configured above.
>
> DNS servers can also be configured through the 'advanced' GUI interface,
> and in a large deployment one could create custom images that pre-load
> that information. So there are methods one could use to streamline the
> process somewhat.
>
> Does that help answer your question?
>
> On 03/24/2015 12:45 AM, Josh Harle wrote:
> > Hi Josh,
> >
> > That's a nice sanity check for me, but I'm wondering why you need to do
> > the stage "Changing DNS server information on each node" at all?
> >
> > Why when you use one or multiple internet gateways is it happy to
> > propagate DNS through it, (without individually configuring nodes) but
> > not if we set up our own DNS server?  Also, presumably this is what
> > happens if we use a captive-portal/access management tools?
> >
> >
> >
> > Kind Regards,
> >
> > Josh Harle
> > BSc (Hons) BA BFA PhD
> > ____________________
> > http://joshharle.com
> > http://tacticalspace.org <http://tacticalspace.org/>
> > ph: +61 (0)491 155 985
> >
> > On 24 March 2015 at 02:15, Josh King <jking at opentechinstitute.org
> > <mailto:jking at opentechinstitute.org>> wrote:
> >
> >     Hey Josh,
> >
> >     Funny you should ask, we just published documentation covering this
> use
> >     case!
> >
> >
> https://commotionwireless.net/docs/guides-howtos/local-applications/hostnames.html
> >
> >     Option #2 is what you want. It's not as thoroughly tested as we'd
> like,
> >     so we'd appreciate your feedback (or any issues filed against
> >     https://github.com/opentechinstitute/commotion-docs, the repo for
> the
> >     website). The upshot is that you have to point the nodes to use that
> as
> >     their DNS server rather than whatever their upstream DNS is.
> >
> >     That said, I'm not certain why it would be dropping the gateway; that
> >     could be a number of issues that we could delve into which are
> separate
> >     from the DNS question.
> >
> >     The round-robin bit isn't much trickier. In the section of the doc
> >     entitled "Changing DNS server information on each node," you can add
> >     multiple "list 'dns' '<ip address>'" lines, one for each server
> you've
> >     set up. The node should just rotate through all available DNS servers
> >     one at a time. There are some options to tweak its behavior as well,
> in
> >     case it doesn't query them as expected.
> >
> >     I hope this is helpful!
> >
> >     On 03/23/2015 01:16 PM, Josh Harle wrote:
> >     > Hi All,
> >     >
> >     > I have another question, which I'm sure people can give me insight
> on.
> >     >
> >     > In my mesh network, plugging into a router works fine, and we get
> the
> >     > internet.
> >     >
> >     > I'd like to use an Raspberry Pi running dnsmasq to resolve all DNS
> >     > queries to itself, and serve up some content.  Just like a captive
> >     > portal really, but with the mesh in between.
> >     >
> >     > When I first connect it, the mesh node connected to it picks it up
> >     as a
> >     > gateway.  The DNS isn't being served through it though, and I can
> only
> >     > connect to it via its IP address.  After a while the node no longer
> >     > shows itself as connected to a gateway.
> >     >
> >     > What's the difference between it and a normal gateway?  What do I
> have
> >     > to do to get DNS served up through it across the network?
> >     >
> >     > For bonus points, how much trouble would it be to put more than
> >     one RPi
> >     > into the network at different points to spread the load and reduce
> >     > latency across a geographically spread network?
> >     >
> >     > Thanks for being awesome, in advance!
> >     >
> >     >
> >     >
> >     > Kind Regards,
> >     >
> >     > Josh Harle
> >     > BSc (Hons) BA BFA PhD
> >     > ____________________
> >     > http://joshharle.com
> >     > http://tacticalspace.org <http://tacticalspace.org/>
> >     > ph: +61 (0)491 155 985 <tel:%2B61%20%280%29491%20155%20985>
> >     >
> >     >
> >     > _______________________________________________
> >     > Commotion-discuss mailing list
> >     > Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> >     <mailto:Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> >     > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
> >     >
> >
> >     --
> >     Josh King
> >     Lead Technologist
> >     The Open Technology Institute
> >     http://opentechinstitute.org
> >     PGP Fingerprint: 8269 ED6F EA3B 7D78 F074 1E99 2FDA 4DA1 69AE 4999
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commotion-discuss mailing list
> > Commotion-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/commotion-discuss
> >
>
> --
> Josh King
> Lead Technologist
> The Open Technology Institute
> http://opentechinstitute.org
> PGP Fingerprint: 8269 ED6F EA3B 7D78 F074 1E99 2FDA 4DA1 69AE 4999
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/commotion-discuss/attachments/20150325/b8d8264a/attachment.html>