[CWN-Summit] Seeking advice on low-cost mesh node wifi in St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Stelios Valavanis stel at onshore.com
Tue Nov 18 15:14:17 CST 2008


well i guess you run openwrt (what i mean by "system") on most of these since 
you can't run cuwin on linksys and buffalo. how are the radios linking up to 
the p-p backhauls? are you using WDS?

On Tuesday 18 November 2008 3:10:28 pm Ramon Roca wrote:
> You have some statistics on the box at the left.
> Currently I do see 603 point to point links, which I assume is what you
> mean by backhaul. Those are often radio links with dedicated radios.
> AP/client links are often links to CPEs.
> What do you mean by "system", could you be more specific?
> If you mean a specific kind of hardware, from WRT54G, Buffalo to
> Routerboards, Alix are getting popular now.
> As a CPE primarily was WRT54G/Buffalo, now Nanostations are also getting
> popular.
> As firmwares, same history...
> No single "system".
> You know, those things change over time, new "systems" will be made
> available in the future, and hopefully suitable for building open networks.
> The user choose the role/system he likes, and then provides that
> information into the platform thus get provisioned of his configuration.
>
> En/na Stelios Valavanis ha escrit:
> > i mean the wireless 5000 node part. what system is on those radios? and
> > how many backhaul lines are there?
> >
> > On Tuesday 18 November 2008 2:02:58 pm Ramon Roca wrote:
> >> When I said platform, I mean that we do use a suite of tools, not only a
> >> firmware family, routing protocol or so (which imho cuwin is about, my
> >> apologies if I'm wrong), we trend to support many, as well as
> >> provisioning other features.
> >> The platform is about sevelal things like a module for drupal which
> >> includes GIS tools, network and backbone planning, ip provisioning,
> >> bandwith/latency monitorizing, up to the self-configuration of the
> >> network devices for many firmwares/hardware (RouterOS, dd-wrt,
> >> openwrt....) and some other pieces. Since also includes a CMS, also
> >> provides a collaboration space (news, wiki, forums...). That is the
> >> "standard" things to provide user oriented tools "web 2.0 alike", plus
> >> extending the same concept to the communications infrastructure.
> >>
> >> Since is technology agnostic, doesn't rely on a single technology, is
> >> your choice if you want to play with experimental things or deploy a
> >> stable mesh combining infrastructure mode.
> >>
> >> The platform have been developed to meet our local needs, but last year
> >> have been reworked to allow support for any deployment worldwide and a
> >> distributed architecture. We're in the hope that by combining such kind
> >> of platforms with all the emerging technology and wider community
> >> support, that would revert in enhancing the platform itself.
> >>
> >> It can run either hosted by reusing our already parametrized servers
> >> (much easier - fast start) or take the software and setup a new LAMP
> >> server to run it, which could mean that you need some previous training
> >> since is about setting up an application, or build the server later
> >> on....
> >>
> >> As an example, my node with the map, connections, real time information,
> >> etc...
> >> http://guifi.net/en/elserrat
> >> At the devices list, the "unsolclic" column gives you the configuration
> >> of the firmware used at the node, etc, etc...
> >>
> >> A wider view of the network over a map:
> >> http://guifi.net/en/node/2413/view/map
> >>
> >> En/na Stelios Valavanis ha escrit:
> >>> wow what are you using? cuwin? how many backhaul connections for 5000
> >>> nodes?
> >>>
> >>> On Tuesday 18 November 2008 12:54:43 pm Ramon Roca wrote:
> >>>> The platform we've built at guifi.net is addressed to many of the
> >>>> things what you are asking for, which is about combining several
> >>>> features (wide hardware/firmware support, oriented to
> >>>> coommunity/self-managed but reliable open networks including
> >>>> residential access, monitored, scalable, provisioning for proxys, open
> >>>> source, etc...).
> >>>> We're running it here for a +5,000 nodes / +6,000 kms.
> >>>>
> >>>> We can talk deeper if you are interested.
> >>>>
> >>>> En/na Ben West ha escrit:
> >>>>> Hello all,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I should first apologize if I am posing an oft-asked question, but I
> >>>>> find myself at an impasse, even after 2+ years of casual research and
> >>>>> spectatorship in the Mesh Node Wifi movement (not to mention twice
> >>>>> attending the CWN conference).  The diversity of participants in Mesh
> >>>>> Node Wifi is awesome, but it can make feasibility research difficult.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I work/volunteer at an activist community center (CAMP, stlcamp.org)
> >>>>> in south St. Louis, and a local foundation just put out an open call
> >>>>> for proposals for investing a substantial sum into community
> >>>>> revitalization projects in the neighborhood.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> These 2 articles about an $8500 deployment of Meraki devices along a
> >>>>> 2mile corridor in Kentucky motivated me to pitch a similar idea for
> >>>>> this St. Louis neighborhood:
> >>>>> http://www.govtech.com/gt/377232?topic=117699
> >>>>> http://www.wireless-nets.com/resources/tutorials/low-cost_mesh_hotzon
> >>>>>e. ht ml
> >>>>>
> >>>>> However, further research in Meraki has yielded some unpopular
> >>>>> business decisions they made just this year:
> >>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meraki#Criticism
> >>>>> http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/24/1318226
> >>>>> http://www.dailywireless.org/2008/11/05/meraki-diy-munifi-for-10kmile
> >>>>>/
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I certainly understand Meraki's motivation to protect their market,
> >>>>> but my impression is that decisions to lock down hardware make their
> >>>>> products less viable in areas where wifi groups may face direct
> >>>>> competition from established ISPs.  (I.e. can't hack routers to
> >>>>> support QoS or customized captive portals).  The latter is actually
> >>>>> directly relevant to my proposal, since I'm aiming for a captive
> >>>>> portal hosting local ads to provide some operating revenue.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> So, assuming you have a $10-$15k start-up budget (including equipment
> >>>>> purchase. deployment, AND marketing) for installing wifi along a
> >>>>> ~2mile corridor with lots of 3story rooftops, what suggestions are
> >>>>> out there?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Meraki, and take your lumps?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Open-mesh.com, which is appealing since OpenWRT can be deployed to
> >>>>> legacy devices like residents' existing Linksys routers?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> OpenWRT + Kamikaze + OLSRd (i.e. roll your own)?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Freifunk.net?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> WifiDog for the captive portal + OpenWRT?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The basic, 1st order requirements for the Mesh network are such:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> - Robust & stable (this will be a funded deployment, and sadly not a
> >>>>> dev project)
> >>>>> - Low-cost equipment (population density of this neighborhood makes
> >>>>> antenna strength 2nd order)
> >>>>> - Capacity for centralized admin console
> >>>>> - MAC tracking and auth (i.e. how many unique wifi clients have
> >>>>> connected) - Quality of Service (we anticipate lots of folks trying
> >>>>> to run file sharing, whether sanctioned or not)
> >>>>> - Customizable captive portal
> >>>>> - Ability to route to multiple DSL connections from different ISPs
> >>>>> w/in the mesh
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 2nd order requirements
> >>>>>
> >>>>> - Support for legacy routers (e.g. able to flash old Linksys
> >>>>> products) - Good transceiver strength
> >>>>> - Integration with PayPal-like subscription payments
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 3rd order requirements
> >>>>>
> >>>>> - Mechanism to control per MAC access based on # bytes downloaded,
> >>>>> e.g. "We see you've downloaded 3GB this month w/o paying for your
> >>>>> access..."  This would be a very appealing way to provide limited
> >>>>> free access, i.e. make the service more competitive, but then enforce
> >>>>> fair cost sharing in case folks opt for sustained freeloading.
> >>>>> - Ability to dynamically divert sessions away from congested DSL
> >>>>> uplinks.  (I hope that having multiple DSL connections in the mesh
> >>>>> will give us composite reserve bandwidth we can actively allocate to
> >>>>> handle sporadic traffic peaks.)  Do conventional Mesh Node
> >>>>> implementations already support this?
> >>>>> - Ability for wifi clients to connect to each other (Meraki does not
> >>>>> support this)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 4th order hopes and dreams
> >>>>>
> >>>>> - Support for integrating a centralized squid-like HTTP caching
> >>>>> server.  I.e. commonly surfed traffic gets cached within the mesh.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I consciously anticipate this mesh node deployment to be a temporary
> >>>>> thing.  The goal is to establish a wifi-savvy neighborhood presence
> >>>>> that can use its collective buying power in the next few years to
> >>>>> transition to new technologies, White Space devices in particular.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Any suggestions would be gladly welcome.
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> CWN-Summit mailing list
> >>>> CWN-Summit at lists.cuwireless.net
> >>>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/cwn-summit

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stel valavanis  http://www.onshore.com/


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