Malusay WiFi Valentines Update

Here are a few updates about our long-awaited barangay wifi network. I took a 2-day leave from work last Monday and Tuesday. I (with Eva and the kids) managed to take the 9 am boat from Tangil to Guihulngan on Saturday--- a pleasant and enjoyable ride with excitement to see the famous dolphins. Unfortunately, not one showed up.

Immediately upon arrival at around 11 am, I checked the tower mast at the house that Popoy and team upgraded. The last 10-foot segment is ready to be fitted with the access points which will be raised and installed last.

In the afternoon, with the help of Jerry, Rodel and JR, we constructed the omni antenna that we planned to replace on the Nanostations. The materials were procured from Australia and HongKong (pigtails and N-Panel connectors) via Benjie's paypal account. To make it short, we attached the access points (BH-2 and Node 1), with Node 1 having the new home-made omni antenna on the last segment and performed tests.

With the availability of the "climber", we were able to raise the last segment up--- it was a day under the sun that caused me the burns and the first time for our climber to be up performing such a feat (of course with the industry-grade climbing gear courtesy of Benjie).

Late in the afternoon, we got the signal from the access point above (Node-1) on our test wifi-equipped PocketPC and Cellphones. The signal is weak due to the elevation, but the primary concern is to make this node link with Nodes 2, 3 & 4 (please see network diagram below) while giving the link to users nearby at the same time.

I considered the deployment of the BH-2 and Node-1 a milestone but we also had the opportunity to explain to other people and visitors about our project. All of them praised for the initiative and the help from those outside of the country. They even hoped they can do that in their places with our help some day.

Next, Popoy and I together with Rodel made an ocular inspection at Caesar M's property at the NORSU area. Popoy had prior verbal approval to use his property for the BH-1 tower. The plan is to start the construction on Saturday, Feb 20, 2010 (yesterday). Actually, Popoy sent me sms message that the construction is in progress as scheduled.

The following pictures explain more:

The Planned Network in general

The last segment with the BH-2, Node-1 (PowerStation and Nanostation using external home-made omni antenna)

Rodel staring up the climber

The climber with the climbing gear

The upgraded mast w/ BH-2 and Node-1 (View to the Northeast)

The upgraded mast w/ BH-2 and Node-1 (View to the East)

We also received additional pledge of donation from Benjie for the Squid Caching Server. Daghang salamat!

Of course, I also met the primary objectives and the reasons why I took the leave, but let me keep it to myself.

More updates as we continue this non-profit project for our kababayans!

Malusay WiFi New Year Updates

We missed the December 2009 target for the Malusay Community WiFi to be up and running but we are still actively working on it.

As previously planned, I was supposed to upgrade the tower at the house for our BH-2 and Node-1 radios but the turn-buckles and guy wires were not yet available. Instead, I just picked up a junk Pentium III 650 MHZ and a couple of 10/100 Realtek lan cards for pfSense to run on it, however, Jerry offered his already-working hardware (and a few bottles of beer) and helped me successfully setup pfSense 1.2.3 on it. By the way, thanks to Lemuel for providing the CD installer for pfSense.

The Hardware

pfSense Installation

With the new pfSense box, we were able to configure and test the equipment from Backhaul-1, Backhaul-2, Node-1 and Node-2.

Another reason for the delay is the need to find additional options for the location of Backhaul-1 as construction of the tower would be some kind of a permanent structure to build. Popoy and I visited the NORSU area last Saturday (Jan. 2, 2010) and found 3 more possible locations. From all these 4 locations, we will select the best spot in terms of signal strength, safety and budget considerations.

Also, I was not able to get the UTP cables but fortunately, Popoy released the amount and we can now purchase the roll.

Guys, we need your support. Please bear with us as we are just doing this on our own free time.

Happy New Year sa tanan!

P.S. Thanks to Glencel and Juan also for the RJ-45 connectors!!!

Malusay WiFi Christmas Updates

Merry Christmas everyone!

I found the time to upgrade the AirOS firmware of the PowerStations to the latest and configure them to serve as the backhaul equipment to transmit/receive at 24 mbps at 26 dbm (approximately 400 mWatts).I was able to simulate the link between BH1 which will be deployed in the NORSU area at a 100-foot elevation and BH2 which will be deployed at the antenna mast we have at the house and bridged to the pfSense WAN port.

BH1

BH2

PowerStation PoE

PowerStation LED

Also, surveying the antenna mast results in the following requirements: old guy wires to be replaced, additional 40-foot G.I. pipes at 4 segments requires guy wires and turn-buckles aside from the labor. I plan to do it myself if I have the time and the guts--- maybe after the new year and before we get back to work again.

OldAntenna Mast (front view)

OldAntenna Mast (side view)

Aside from the antenna upgrade, the pfSense box will also be sourced from old Pentium III, 10/100 mbps LAN cards and a hard drive that are lying around.

Advance happy new year!

Barangay Community Wireless Network 2

With the first 4 Ubiquity wireless routers, I have tested using the Openwrt-Robin firmware for the Open-Mesh Network. The network layout is here. Sadly, there has been a lot of instability problems. One problem is the loss of connectivity to the internet from now and then even without being disconnected from the node itself.

I have tried using the Openwrt without the ROBIN or OLSR and there seems to be no problem with connectivity. I tested the r2671 ROBIN firmware and some of the lower versions but still has the same problem. I am not sure if it is Nano2 or Pico2 related, but I don't have time to delve deeper.

The reason why I was thinking of using Openwrt is for the mesh networking with an attractive Management Dashboard and the CoovaChilli for captive portal stuff for free. DD-WRT requires an additional overhead expense for the activation key for these Ubuiquity devices for which we do not have the budget. Aside from the instabilities that I have encountered, the system still would require another PC for the RADIUS and MySQL servers as I cannot afford to load all these into the 32 MB Pico2 as the gateway node.

Finally, I have decided to use the original devices' firmwares--- the AirOS. The plan is to configure a backhaul and a WDS system for the nodes onto which the clients can connect to. In between the backhaul and the WDS nodes, a pfSense box is used for many things like the Captive Portal with RADIUS Authentication, routing, bridging, DHCP and monitoring. I have used pfSense extensively in the past and it looks like it is now more stable.

I would probably be using this method until such time when more nodes are needed and probably the ROBIN firmware with Open-Mesh will be very stable by then.

With the current pace, I think the December 2009 target for deployment is still within the window frame.

Next on my agenda are: Captive Portal with RADIUS Auth and Re-Auth, and Node2 and Node3 setup and testing.

Barangay Community Wireless Network

Too busy with real-life activities... work, work, and lots of work!

Now, I managed to schedule my time for some more productive work. This time, I'll be involved in yet another community collaboration for the next few months. I will be doing this during my free time (outside of working hours) in the service of my long-deprived residential village--- the barangay Malusay.

It's been in the planning stages for quite a while already and now we have the equipment.

Stay tuned for the barangay Malusay Mesh Network (MMN)... well actually, I just made this name up for now as we still have to let the community decide. The network is tentatively scheduled to be up in December 2009 for the first 15 members to connect from 3 or 4 Open-Mesh nodes.

Freebsd 6.2 Ports Install Needs XORG_UPGRADE Environment Variable

On a FreeBSD 6.2 machine, installing a port having an xorg dependency returned with this error:

...
===> Verifying install for /usr/local/libdata/xorg/libraries in /usr/ports/x11/xorg-libraries
Read /usr/ports/UPDATING for the procedure to upgrade or install xorg 7.2.
*** Error code 1
...

At least 2 workarounds are available.
1.) Setting an environment variable XOR_UPGRADE will bypass the xorg upgrade message:

% make deinstall clean
% set XORG_UPGRADE=yes
% make install clean

2.) Pass WITHOUT_X11 argument to make:
% make -DWITHOUT_X11 install clean

Works for me! ;)

On FreeBSD CVS Checkout

This is just to point out that FreeBSD now ships with a CVS checkout tool equivalent to the usual cvsup. It is called "csup" and there is no need to run "pkg_add -r cvsup-without-gui".

The csup project is here.