[Mesh] state of the mesh

Hey y'all - You might have noticed that in the past months, there's been some activity on making sure that our people's open home nodes (aka open, vpn-enabled, meshing internet routers) are able to find their way to the "big" internet. In the spirit of openness, I figured to share some updates. the short version: To make our network a little more resilient, fixes have been introduced in the latest firmware, new vpn/tunnel digger servers have been created, node whisperers were trained and, last night, Juul and I have worked on upgrading older home nodes when possible. In the next weeks, we'll retire home nodes that cannot be patched remotely as we complete our server upgrades. Only six home nodes have not yet been patched/upgraded. Please holler on https://peoplesopen.net/chat if you'd like to figure out whether your home node(s) has been updated. the longer version: Earlier this year, an older version of our vpn-like solution, tunneldigger, started reliably misbehaving after a routine os upgrade (for long read, see https://github.com/sudomesh/bugs/issues/8#issuecomment-363304285). Because home nodes were configured to use a single vpn/tunneldigger server, this caused the majority of home nodes (all but one) to lose their connection to the "big" internet. After some soul searching and collaboration, we managed to downgrade the operating system on the vpn server/exit node, and get the home nodes to reconnect. Also, we started working on more long term solutions like: 1. upgrading tunneldigger (vpn-like) software: rather than using our own custom version, we now use a recent version of tunneldigger using https://github.com/wlanslovenija/tunneldigger . 2. introduce more exit nodes: we now have two exit nodes, and the options to create more relatively easily. Actually, if you feel adventurous, you can run your own vpn server /exit node using a service like Digital Ocean. See https://github.com/sudomesh/exitnode . 3. improve our monitoring: rudimentary active and passive monitoring has been put in place. 4. figure out a patch process to upgrade home nodes: Most active nodes have been patched. See https://github.com/sudomesh/patches for more information. 5. last, but not least: more folks (aka "node whisperers") are now able to help maintain our network. Also see https://github.com/sudomesh/node-whisperer-program . Thanks to the many for making all this happen, Mesh in peace, -jorrit PS. If you have opinions, comments, suggestions, or would like to contribute in other ways, please join at https://peoplesopen.net/chat or post on this email list.