Appearance

2022-12-17 ​

People & list of Topics

pedro, hiure, gio, ilario, cristina, luandro, duy

  • updates from Altermundi
  • future meetings schedule
  • website
  • list active LibreMesh communities on the homepage
  • next BattleMesh
  • recent development
  • technical meeting

Updates from Altermundi ​

Gio: babeld is the one with active developing and we are using in the framework of Libremesh.

NEW from dev side of Librerouter/Libremesh: - 2 MIMO antennas have 2 different perception of the quality of the signal and Konejo is working on the UI in the Lime APP to give better feedback. The next interface for antenna alignment in lime-app will show two signals for each antenna that is MIMO 2x2, one signal for each "chain". This should work on most wifi chipsets (most routers).

Cristina: Are you doing this for all the devices that Libremesh actually support or only for Librerouter? Altermundi is focusing on LibreRouter (it has priority, if possible things are implemented for working also on other routers or easy for other people to adapt to every hardware) but Gio recognizes the importance of supporting other routers.

Luandro: Is there a public roadmap for what u've been working? Gio: I didn't have the time to write a public roadmap. Lime-app is an important part of the roadmap.

Gio: a big hat that take together librerouter and libremesh The goal of LibreMesh-LibreRouter developers is to make something useful for communities where there are no specialized people able to go deep in the networking.

Work on Alter Mundi roadmap:

  • Lime-App: alignment with multiple chains
  • Rewrite of shared-state
  • Core parts: wifi driver, routing protocols (layer 2 & 3)
  • El Repo
  • Ad-hoc -> 802.11s -> Access Point Mode with mesh support

Alfred was the old tool we used for sharing information between nodes implemented by the B.AT.M.A.N-adv developers Alfred had problems on non-small networks and caused flooding in the networks "shared-state" is the new one implemented in the LibreMesh repository. For example, one of the features it has is that in the lime-app you see the information of the other antennas talking by "shared-state", like the hostname, SSID, the mac address.. The improvements of shared-state are being written by Javier supervised by Gio. They will stop relying on OpenWrt's HTTP server

Ilario: this code wil be pushed on the openwrt upstream packages? at the moment "shared-state" is a feature inside LIbremesh framework Gio: at the moment not. Shared-state makes a lot of assumptions on how the network is configured, so it is likely to work only for LibreMesh networks, until now. There is work to do for making it general.

Luandro: will the plugins need to be rewritten with the next version of shared-state? Gio: we don't know yet

Gio: we want to allow the communities to edit more parameters in a community-wide way from lime-app (now it is possible for the nodes' password), for example the wifi channel and to flash all the routers at once

Gio: another thing I am doing is to ensure that the low level stuff (wifi drivers, routing protocols) are improving. The problems could arise from the batman-adv not receiving enough active support, and maybe we could abandon L2 entirely. We also are looking into Babeld because it is not designed for our usecase so maybe we will need to add stuff to it.

Gio: we are also working on elrepo.io, which is the app-level stuff for network communities, for sharing contents between clients

Gio: regarding the wifi links, at the beginning we used adhoc that now is quite abandoned, then 802.11s that also is on the way of getting abandoned as in the new radios it does not work well. To avoid getting stuck with old radios, which means old routers, I am looking in a way to use Access Point mode instead of 802.11s, modifying it a bit so that we use it in a mesh way using something that is very well supported (AP mode). Anyway in LibreRouter we can always add PCI wifi cards.

future meeting schedule ​

next meeting schedules seems ok

  • Saturday the 4th of February 2023 at 13:00 UTC (14:00 CET, 10:00 ART).
  • Saturday the 1st of April 2023 at 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST, 10:00 ART).
  • Saturday the 3rd of June 2023 at 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST, 10:00 ART).
  • Saturday the 5th of August 2023 at 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST, 10:00 ART).
  • Saturday the 7th of October 2023 at 13:00 UTC (15:00 CEST, 10:00 ART).
  • Saturday the 2nd of December 2023 at 13:00 UTC (14:00 CET, 10:00 ART). Remeber one with the others with an email just a week before, ad promemoria

website ​

Ilario: the website is not keeping up with the changes on github/libremesh/lime-web Gio: the website is hosted in Cordova but probably has not maintaince for years, so we have to fix this issue, where host the website.. Ilario: maybe some other community can host? Gio: temporarily we can have it hosted on Github or Gitlab, as the website is generated as a static website, it should be enough to create a continuous integration for that. Cri: better if we avoid Github, but it is ok if it is temporary Luandro: not a fan of Github either, but Github makes sense as the repository is already on Github Gio: not sure who is maintaining the DNS Ilario: better to fix what we have before doing it somewhere else. Ilario & Cri volunteer to maintain the server Gio: the current maintainer for Altermundi's servers didn't mainain the servers (did other useful stuff anyway). The machines are in a critical state, many problems are there and some physical interventions are going to be needed. Ilario: ok, you know the situation firsthand and suggest to move it, let's do it Gio: when we will have the server working again, the current integration stuff can be kept as a backup Luandro voluntering to the CI for the website and Ilario will give the access to the repo. Documentation o how to setup Github pages: https://docs.github.com/en/pages/getting-started-with-github-pages/configuring-a-publishing-source-for-your-github-pages-site

next battlemesh ​

pedro: next battlemesh in calafou! https://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV15 looking for funding, to facilitate the travel of the farer people, Battlemesh will be between the 8 and the 14 of May. Battlemesh has the intent to compare an dialogate between the diferent community that develop the differents mesh protocols. In the pas edition there where two firmware based on openwrt: libremesh and Gluon develop from freifunk, and was interesting the meetings. here video of the last https://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV14 In the final assembly people move the attention on the community more that on the performance of the routing protocols. so is really good if we can yearly meeting in that event, in Battlemesh, as Libremeshh community,

from 8 of 14 may in Calafou, bring hardwares! because the new calafou network needs. Because BEFORE the event we want restyle the network of the settlement (an old textile industry on a river) to give connectivity to their workshape and residential, but also set a testbed for net. There there is optical fiber, so we have to see how manage that expect, and some problem with rats. Plan to deploy 7 or 8 routers on differents levels of the building, some internal and some external. We have 5 good outdoor routers (Plasma Cloud PA1200). Duy, ilario and pedro are documenting in a private repository that intend to be public at some point https://0xacab.org/duy/wbmv15. Write to duy at sytemli dot org if you would like to be added

Recent development ​

Need to update LibreMesh to work with openwrt22, we will drop some devices that will be abandoned after OpenWrt19 The outdoor routers that we are going to use in BattleMesh are supported since OpenWrt 21.02, so that we need to update LibreMesh in order to use them. different people are touching files and testing, but need work together

Technical meeting ​

Cri: we could have a meeting for testing LibreMesh on OpenWrt22 Ilario: important to test it on different routers (e.g. routers with only one ethernet port or routers with only 2.4 GHz etc etc) ilario proposes to have a technical online meeting on Wednesday the 4th of January 2023 at 13 UTC -- 14 CET, 10 ART