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.