Mesh/25 April 2017

people's open network hacknight - 25 April 2017

intros

• will: I want to work on getting us 501(c)(3) status and insurance.
• juul:
• jorrit: I commented on a google sheet, and I think that's what I did last week. And I'd like to work on this solar experiment also. Million dollar prize.
• eve: I'm eve, I'm a sysadmin by day and by night I put on my cape and become writer-girl and film-maker-girl.
• jenny: Been working a bit on board entity stuff and added some notes to agenda from past meetings.
• bullitt: I tried to install patchwork and it failed for two weeks. I got ssbc installed. I want to get on roofs!
• scott / nanomonkey: I am obviously interested in the mesh network. Specifically the survival mesh too (disaster radio) and anything involving alternative energy.
• grant: I have recently been hacking on the firmware. Uploaded newest firmware to the build server. Working on extender node firmware build. Been hacking on ESP8266.
• jehan: been working on researching babel and extended the network testing thing that jorrit and grant were working on. Been procrastinating setting up a mai
• noah: First meeting. I am not sure what I want to work on yet. I have a background in security and cryptography and devops.
• andy: i like hacking on software. still pursuing the perhaps futile effor to get the firmware building on a free CI service. I'd like to get that working so we can iterate on the firmware a little more quickly. would like to speed that up with some judicious use of caching... also work on beefing up our node monitoring tools
• lesley: interested in a lot of different themes. been learning a bit about different modulations and protocols.
  • grant - shows a book, jenny suggests we make a designated shelf in the bookshelves of sudo for mesh folks
• daniel: i am building a wall+gate with eve and a firend of mine into the server area. today i brought some hardware that's donated from work.
• rubin: absolutely no technological background. i just tripped into mesh stuff. i'm into decentralization in general. i don't know what i could contribute beyond maybe hosting a node.
• brandon: friends with rubin. basically in the same boat. [they fix pianos, side note of relevance to goofing around with ham radio. got interested in radio to begin with as decentralized / emergency preparedness. i get my internet from Unwired via LMI. when we put my dish up we were getting 75 MBit/sec speeds unthrottled. i live at 66th and sacramento. my house isn't very tall but it's ours. we have a friend who almost came tonight who lives all the way up the hill on panoramic.
  • jorrit: how did you hear about this?
    • rubin: was baked, got on chatroom, talked to juul
• obed: i heard about the mesh network, came to one of the events about a month ago. i got my router so i'm getting that hooked up. talked to folks about maybe setting up a network in my home country of haiti.

updates

hardware & installation

• New gate for hardware area - way to go daniel and eve!!! -At this point we are just waiting for the kennel fencing to be installed.
  • Take up collection for gate expenses
    • ?? : I'll kick in

• New gear donation (Daniel)
• 28 Ruckus ZoneFlex 7363 APs
• One Ruckus Zone Director ZD1100 Wireless Controller
• One 48 port HP 2910al PoE+ Switch
• Two 24 Port HP 2910al PoE+ Switches

• daniel: brought 28 access points. POE powered. also a wireless controller (not open source) - if we set these APs all over the building can have more dense coverage, log into them and see more details about what routers are connected etc. Switches are 24 ports (2x) and that come with 2 transceivers (1gig & 10 GB). good for stock cables, or corporate clients.
  • juul: should mention the switches are special, provide 48V on every port
    • daniel: also managed switches, so we can... need to wipe all of them, mark them with blue tape with numbers, can look into the console

• jehan: nodes on roof are currently powered on
  • juul: due to gate installation, lots of rearrange, good excuse to run the cables more properly. all 48V, cisco standard, tho a lot of our stuff is 24V, can get converters (poe buck converted) to make them work with the 48V stuff.

• juul: just fyi switches are layer2 only and routers are both layer2 and layer3

software & infrastructure

• jehan - imma set up an email server

SSID update (Marc)

• juul: did a bit of work on makenode. checks for home address
  • naming of newly-configured routers, now peoplesopen.net (unique identifier)
    • unique_identifier differentiates between 2.4GHz and 5.1GHz (fast)
• various discussions re: using emojis, IP addresses
  • jenny: suggest we add an emoji-reading library in firmware build / makenode when folx are installing on linux machines
    • juul: should be an option when you configure your node
      • jorrit: to me, i like defaults... so this adds on to an already-confusing list of questions
• every node gets its own identifier
  • jorrit: one more argument for the ip address append is that it's thus far the only functional name i've heard - less fun, but easy to explain, can explain over telephone and IRC
• grant: any long term plan for ipv6?
  • juul: going to implement the function, not add it
    • daniel: in my personal experience, we had a bunch of printers. putting the ip address on the end helped with troubleshooting.
• jake (takes the podium) - very exciting for people to learn about IP addresses this way, can teach people how to run a server in their house for their files etc... think in IPv4 it's a special moment when that still works, should expose ppl to that before it gets really crazy... even if we had to shorten peoplesopen.net to something shorter, or leave off the 100., would still be valuable for people to navigate
  • daniel: easier to identify nodes, would be more immediately familiar with what's running up there
• grant: make people feel empowered, even if a little scary... will make people feel like cool hackers
• so heard reason for namings is to prevent scenario where you're between 2 access points and can flip back and forth... clients says the ssids (string name)... vis a vis... ? - the idea is you're going for really good coverage of the area... in this scenario wherever you go you're auto connected
  • juul: if someone has 2 access points in their home, you're going to have a poor connection.. reason why we're doing this is because we've gotten bug reports... will intermittently switch between them. correct that it shouldn't do that, but it does... lots of ppls wifi cards are bad enough that this is a real problem
    • jehan: haven't there been roaming things tried before?
      • juul: possible to implement roaming, but we don't have anyone with the tech expertise to implement it. would be the first to implement mesh networking with L3 roaming, but that's a huge task. We have figured out how to do it, but I'm not doing it
        • jehan:
          • juul: when it hands you over, clients should assume they're on the same L2 network, not ask for dhcp lease or new gateway. should be updating to a new gateway but no way to get to it
            • will: max # of characters? (32?)
              • lesley: have diff ssid scheme on 2.4 and 5GHz for continuous coverage but...?
                • juul: emoji's on 5GHz and IPs on 2.4....
                  • lesley: people not going to be ...?
• jorrit: propose to bump to next week? unless someone makes a commit and just does it. seems like it's still forming
  • will: full peoplesopen.net key - it's advertising.
    • rubin: that is exactly what drew me
      • grant: i second jorrit
        • jehan: could also register pplsopen.net
          • juul: whaddya know, we already have!

new firmware on build server (Grant)

Grant:

• need to get build server working again, if you can go do it
• working on uploading new extender node firmware, just about there

Omni Router Down

• Will's Calyx Hotspot is providing internet until LMI router is fixed
  • gonna work on getting it to mesh after the meeting
• What's wrong with the LMI router?
• [someone fill this in]

Omni roof node issues

• Marc: "the mynet600 and nanobeam m5 routers won't associate with each other for unknown reasons".
  • This is not necessarily a big deal since nanobeam + mynet is not a good pairing anyway. We should be using nanostations.
• in general we don't want a very short range omni node connecting with a directional node right next door
  • jenny can help arrange that tmrw or the next day
    • will: can possibly see them from my place

communications & outreach

• jorrit: hoping new folks could take a look at our homepage and tell us what they think
• Oakland Digital Inclusion Week (Jorrit) organized by Oakland Public Library

http://oaklandlibrary.org/events/main-library/protect-privacy-resist-profiling-malkia-cyril-and-nicole-ozer-discuss-digital-ri

• • too late to connect to that maybe, but indicative of the relatioship between mesh and libraries. maybe too late to participate organizationally
• Will & Jenny started a spreadsheet of businesses to reach out to - <lets keep the link off of public pads>
  • Should I protect the sheet and invite everyone?
    • jenny: basically tabs organized by neighborhoods as distincified by neighborhoods & businesses
• Will: Node installation at 50th street and Webster next weekend - 2 ubiquiti nanostsion m2s
• peoplesopen.net/donations redirects to a sheet for sales / donations for gear. just got a $100 donation from Institute for the Future re: this nigerian floating slum... Makoko (wikipedia articles) floating school imagining the future of smart sensor tech integrated with mesh etc

ESP boards

• Marc has a couple if people want to work on them

breakout groups

• will/jenny: board stuff
• jehan: email server
• rooftop node debug
• joritt: new folks intro / new nodes
• andy/grant: firmware
• Daniel and Eve upgrading APs and WiFi Controller.

board meeting debrief

• notes at https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh/17_April_2017
• consented on pursuing 501c3 status - best approach?
• bylaws need updating
• entity formation structure - ongoing mailing list thread

action items

• jenny suggests we make a designated shelf in the bookshelves of sudo for mesh folks