Agenda : Meshnet Meetup #4

This is the fourth meetup of community WiFi initiative. As we have decided to meetup once in every 14 days, we are holding our next meetup this Saturday. Please block your date & time for the meetup.

Antenna

  1. How to use directional antennas to support the meshnet?
  2. Interference, Line of sight and other practical challenges
  3. Omni-directional antennas : Use case
  4. Choose a simple model of Omni-directional antenna to build on Sunday

Applications

  1. Try to deploy a meshlocal at opendrops (again)
  2. Use IPv6 address with hardcoded DNS to deploy web apps (ebook library)
  3. Serve files with opentracker in multiple routers
  4. Other applications : Pidgin (chat), Serval Mesh(VoIP), Rumble(Social n/w)
  5. Build a minimalistic web page to serve apks for apps mentioned above

Technical issues

  1. IP conflict
  2. Challenges in deploying torrent trackers
  3. Bonjour protocol used by Pidgin(chat) works only in the subnet x.×.×.0 to x.×.×.255
  4. Common problems when it comes to deploying applications on a layer 2 based mesh network

Delayed Goals

  1. Infographics, Animations
  2. Complete Web page of pymeshnet.github.io
  3. Tutorials for setting up a mesh node (router)
 

Seems good. We can proceed with this.

 
 

Cool!

 
 

Minutes of Meetup

Today we came together to discuss the following agenda
crabgrass.riseup.net/pymesh…/agenda-meshnet-meetup-4

1. Suriyadeepan briefed the experience of building a DIY Directional YAGI Antenna and explained the need for building an Omni-directional Antenna.

2. There were few new people today, so I spoke about the need for meshnet and what are we trying to achieve.

3. Selva spoke about the challenges in wireless devices like how single band routers degrades the performance, how the hardware manufacturers are locking the devices preventing people from using it for their own purpose and the need to build a customized dual band wireless device from existing projects like Turris Omnia.

4. Finally we played around with the routers demonstrating how two people on two different networks can use torrent to share files across the network through their Laptops and Android Phones.

5. Rama Seshan and few others were writing a simple welcome html page to pop up when someone connects to the network.

6. We had a discussion on some technical issues like how to allocate IP address to mesh nodes and non-mesh devices and how to rethink the way we address the nodes in a network and the way we write applications (currently developers are encouraged to think in a centralized manner, i.e client-server model, but our proposal is that we should be thinking in a peer to peer manner while writing applications).

7. One router (i.e meshnode) at Opendrops by Mohanraj is prepared to serve the people around opendrops. We labelled this node with the IP 10.0.1.1 (You cannot access it from Internet, you need to be on this meshnet to make use of it). Some useful android apps APKs and some creative commons, public domain E-books can also be downloaded from this network. Hopefully the mesh node will start functioning from next Saturday.

So whoever, is residing near Rainbow Nagar Park, get ready to join the first ever mesh node in Pondicherry!

 
   

awesome guys :)