We've now had problems with the internet at our first mesh-only-internet house twice. Both times it seems like it was actually the ISP and the problem went away on its own.

It would be really cool if we can have the web UI tell the node operator when a problem is caused by their own ISP or by us and to help them troubleshoot.

Maybe we can come up with some ideas for a helpful troubleshooting page for the UI tonight?

I also had the through that it'd be a really great idea if people could go to their node admin UI URL even when on peoplesopen.net but that it would then only show information that can be safely made public and tell the user to log on to their private SSID to make changes and get more information. Most of the troubleshooting info could actually be available via peoplesopen.net with no danger. The biggest potential problem is if someone is accidentally getting connected to a neighbor's node and then get the admin UI for the wrong router. We can help mitigate that by putting a big "you are connected to the peoplesopen.net node with private wifi name: <your name>" at the top of the page.

------ more unnecessary thoughts below.


I wrote an email about this earlier but it was about the more fanciful scenario where I imagined having a router that talks.

Here are some scenarios that would be pretty cool to handle:

"Uh oh, I had internet within the past 48 hours but the ethernet cable to your modem or Internet router has been physically disconnected. Is the cable connected and is your modem or internet router powered on? [get help troubleshooting]"

"I see that you plugged my WAN port into another device, but it isn't giving me an IP address. Are you sure you plugged me into your modem / Internet router?"

"I can connect to the Internet but it looks like none of the People's Open Network tunnel endpoints are online right now. Somewhere nearby a bunch of technicians are running around with their hair on fire. Hopefully the issue will be fixed shortly! You should still be able to use your private wifi network called <name>. Sorry for the outage :("

"It seems that I am connected to your modem / Internet router but I cannot connect to the Internet. You should call your Internet Service Provider and ask them to fix the issue. Please remember that People's Open Network is not associated with your Internet Service Provider and that some Internet Service Providers do not allow you to share your connection. To see a list of Internet Service Providers in the Bay Area that explicitly allow sharing [click here]. If you don't see your ISP in the list then there is a chance that you may be breaking your terms of service by sharing Internet so it's probably best not to mention the People's Open Network or Sudo Mesh when you call your ISP :)"

"I'm connected to the Internet but I'm getting terrible latency. This means that there is a very long delay whenever data is sent and received from the Internet. It looks like the problem is coming from your Internet Service Provider. ... <insert ISP disclaimer>"