[WLANware] Community Wireless Networks

[Naman Muley]

Hi Aaron,

Thank you so much for a prompt reply! Appreciate it!

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 4:36 AM, L. Aaron Kaplan <aaron at lo-res.org> wrote:

> Hi Naman,
>
>
> On Mar 28, 2012, at 5:36 PM, Naman Muley wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am Naman Muley, a final year undergraduate student at DAIICT, India.
> >
> > I am attempting to create a community wireless mesh network inside my
> institute campus. I wanted some help from freifunk community. I would be
> very grateful if some one could answer my following queries and also how
> does the freifunk mesh network exist?
> >
> > I am using OLSR as the routing protocol. 7
> >
> > 1. IP Address allocation: Say I started an adhoc network. Others joined
> and they received IP by DHCP from me. Now, if I turn off, how will the new
> comers get  IP addresses?
>
> Usually our communities use either some IP autoconfig mechanism (such as
> AHCPd or IPv6 autoconfig) or we use a node database.
> This NodeDB most of all is a kind of "registry" which records which node
> has which IP address (similar to the RIPE DB).
> We are currently working on a new NodeDB implementation which aims at
> kickstarting new communities. Think of it as a "setup.exe" for new
> community networks.
> I got the feeling that this is what you are looking for.
>
> Ahh! Okay. There is one crucial thing I forgot to tell you. We are
students trying to set this whole thing up. So due to lack of funds, we
have not been able to buy routers OR wireless extenders. So, currently
DAiict Mesh Network (DAMN) is a purely adhoc network. Once, we have enough
proof of concept that this is a good idea, we shall be able to demand funds
from the Institute. i'm thinking of buying a mix of Wireless Extenders and
Routers.

Hmm.. You have a hierarchy in place. Communities, individual NATs.  We have
aroung 1500 people on the campus in a 50 acre land. You think one network
is a good idea? Will it be stable? OR I could create pockets of networks
just like you have with NATs.

I was looking for the IP allocation scheme. Thank you! The problem with
AHCPd is, it is not implemented for windows.  And Gabriel
here<http://www.mail-archive.com/babel-users@lists.alioth.debian.org/msg00455.html>says
that people with Windows are doomed. Now, because we currently don't
own routers, I have to come up with an IP allocation scheme. MIT's Roofnet
Project <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/roofnet/design/> had a scheme in which
they used the last 3 bytes of the MAC address to complete the IP address as
: 10.x.x.x.

The registry scheme that you pointed out, could I have some kind of link
where I can study the scheme?

>> During the time I was still in the network, no other node could have
> acted as the DHCP server as that would have created IP conflict.
> >> Only option I see is, someone takes up the DHCP leadership after me.
> Say, the network chooses a leader.
> >
> See above... in my opinion that is not needed.
>
> >> My question is, I read quite a few papers but they don't seem to have
> implementations in linux drivers or any other operating systems for that
> matter
> >
> > 2. DHCP and Windows: One of my friends was running windows and he does
> not seem to be able to obtain IP address. The network is visible to him but
> the prompt only shows "identifying..". On further plumbing we saw that it
> was an IP address problem.
> >
>
> In my opinion we would need more info on the wi-fi setup to understand and
> debug this second issue.
>
> I agree. I think we can tackle this problem. The main problem is IP
allocation.


> > How did you guys manage this? How does the freifunk network work under
> one network? and how are the IP addresses allocated?
> > I might be missing a fundamental thing here. Please pardon my noobness ;)
>
> See above.
>
>
> Thanks again Aaron for your time!

> Aaron
>
> Yours gratefully,
Naman

>
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