[hackerspaces] Mesh network specs

[Todd]

The only reason to go with expensive hardware for the backhauls is, I am 
expecting a lot of signal loss and reflection because chicago is an 
urban area, and I want to pick hardware with a lot of rx/tx power behind 
it and if possible niceties like beam-shaping.

As for the router configs, I was planning for those to all be static IP 
configurations.

I guess it would be possible to not have a captive portal and just 
manually assign logins via a radius server ?

As for which protoal to use, I would like to choose whichever is the 
most popular/well supported currently as programming is not my area of 
expertise.
Probably  OLSR or 802.11s, B.A.T.M.A.N seems popular but i'm not sure if 
it is right for this setup.


On 12/28/2011 12:30 PM, The Doctor wrote:
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> On 12/28/2011 05:49 AM, Todd wrote:
>
>> For the mesh, I do envision as being peer to peer, the only reason
>> to use backhauls is because I am anticipating that we may not be
>> able have good enough coverage that the speed won't suck, so it
>> should still be peer to peer and the backhauls, of which should be
>> few and just to make large distance jumps,  would be transparent
>> bridges.
> That is the general plan that we chose to go with at Project
> Byzantium.  You can't count on having total coverage for a given area,
> and in fact this may not be an ideal situation because wireless is a
> shared medium.
>
>> I have not worked with mesh networking before, not have I had
>> enough routers to test anything out yet, although that will change
>> in the next
> Might I suggest that you prototype using wi-fi enabled laptops and
> netbooks before you lay out the cash for hackable access points?
> It'll be cheaper and you'll have a better idea of what you're getting
> into so when they do arrive you'll be able to hit the ground running
> (and make all new mistakes). :)
>
>> 2 weeks, I want it to be as transparent as possible to the end
>> users, and we will be setting up each router (with openWRT)
>> personally, the people who host the nodes shouldn't ever touch
>> them. So it should work like a normal hotspot with captive portal,
>> at least that is what I am hoping for.
> What captive portal software are you going with?  We've tried a bunch
> of them and nothing we've used has worked with IP aliases (i.e., wlan0:1).
>
>> The assumption here is that the mesh would be handing out IPs via
>> DHCP, or would that not work ?
> If you mean network configuration for clients, yes.  If you mean for
> other mesh nodes, I don't recommend it because you'll run into a
> chicken and egg problem over and over again.
>
> Here's how we solved that problem:
>
> https://github.com/Byzantium/Byzantium/blob/master/control_panel/networkconfiguration.py#L291
>
>> For the backhaul links I am going with professional (read
>> expensive) hardware,
> Any particular reason?
>
> - -- 
> The Doctor [412/724/301/703]
>
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