Mesh/Home and extender nodes

There are two types of nodes in the mesh:

Illustration showing how a sudomesh home node can connect to a window-mounted extender node. The device with two antennas is the home node and the device on the outside of the window is an extender node.

Illustration showing a more complicated setup. Here the node operator has connected their personal computer, a small Raspberry Pi computer and two extender nodes: One on the outside of the window and one on the roof (not shown but a can be seen going up and out of the frame). This is definitely an advanced node operator.

A close-up of the wired network ports on the home node and their use.

Home nodes

Every node operator has a home node. The home node does everything you need for the mesh. It must be kept indoors since home nodes don't like rain or sun. Each home node has two wifi radios and two antennas so they can talk to other mesh nodes on both the 2.4 and 5 gigaherz frequencies. Home nodes also have one wired network port for connecting to your existing internet connection (if you have one), two wired network ports to connect to any of your computers that don't have wifi and two wired network ports for connecting extender nodes (see next section).

Supported Hardware

Currently we're supporting: At the moment, we are supporting the following routers for home nodes:

• TP-Link WDR3500
• TP-Link WDR3600
• TP-Link WDR4300
• Western Digital MyNet N600
• Western Digital MyNet N750

Setup

Instructions for flashing and configuring home nodes are at our walkthrough page.

Info

Home nodes broadcast 3 SSIDs (these are the wifi names that you can connect to):

• `peoplesopen.net` - the public network that anyone can connect to and that connects to the rest of the mesh
• `pplsopen.net-node2node` - the "adhoc" network that the node will use to connect to other routers
• (Your private SSID Name) - you can set a private ssid name and a wpa2 password to connect to the node. When you're connected to this network, you won't be connected to the rest of the mesh, and your traffic will not be routed through the mesh exit server. You can connect to this ssid to use the web admin to make basic config changes.

Extender nodes

Extender nodes are optional add-ons to your home node. They plug into your home node with a cable and act as a sort of extra antenna that extends the signal of your home node to reach mesh nodes that are further away. Extender nodes come in different shapes and sizes. You can get extender nodes that look like little parabolic dishes and these are suitable for mounting on your roof and making connections to other nodes several miles away! Or you can get ones that are flat and tall that are good for extending the signal out your window and to your close neighbours or maybe to a nearby park. Most extender nodes can be mounted outside and only need one cable that carries both data and power.

To tell you the truth, each extender node isn't really just an antenna: They each have their own computers and wifi radios so they can talk on different wifi channels at the same time as your home node without causing interference.