Ninux.org Wireless Community

Dal 6 all’11 Maggio ci sarà uno sprint di sviluppo su nodeshot a Madrid al Medialab Prado in occasione dell’evento Visualizar’15.

Durante il workshop alcuni partecipanti di Ninux e Guifi si incontreranno per migliorare nodeshot applicandolo ad un un prototipo di mappa locale di Guifi.

E’ possibile partecipare allo sprint anche da remoto, entra in contatto con noi tramite la mailing list dedicata a nodeshot, sulla documentazione puoi trovare le istruzioni su come cominciare a contribuire.

The GSoC work to improve eigenNet ( the OpenWrt based firmware ) is finally finished!

All the planned features and more are now implemented and the code is ready to rock on ours roof, moreover the eigenNet firmware community is very enthusiast on the work done so the code is going to be completely marged ( the most part is already in 😀 ) on the official git branch!

What was implemented:

• Selectable custom community CRDA
• Pointing GUI
• Bandwidth test server and GUI
• Conditional  IPv4 gateway announcing
• ATH5K driver support
• 5GHz device support
• Export info via http (future integration into NodeShot)
• Ebtables based firewall

Future plan:

• OpenWrt trunk madwifi support is rapidly changing we have to take that in account for the future
• Batman-adv is evolving so rapidly too adding new features and changing some paradigms so we should take advantage of that in the future
• Light and secure web management ( NodeShot is not ready yet to do that so we should wait )

Checkout the code  and give us feedback for the final merge 😀 !

After the good news of being accepted for the Google Summer of Code 2012, I have started to work hard on my project; first of all I have learned a lot of things about git, the version control system used by the community around eigenNet firmware to collaborate on the development of the OpenWRT based firmware suitable for community mesh networks, then I have created my own clone of the master repository, I started editing the code and then requested to merge into master when a set of feature was complete and tested enough.

What is done:

• Selectable custom community CRDA
• Pointing GUI
• Bandwidth test server and GUI
• Conditional  IPv4 gateway announcing
• ATH5K driver support
• 5GHz device support

What is not done yet:

• Node Shot integration schema/classes
• Community broad testing
• Final adjustment

More news and updates soon!

Last Thursday, for the “Giovedì nerd” (i.e. “Nerd Thursday”) held every week at the Fusolab in Rome we had a Google Summer of Code Meetup.

Ninux.org is participating in the Google Summer of Code program thanks to Freifunk, that is acting as an umbrella organization for us.

We talked with many people from all around Rome about the GSoC projects that we had completed in the last years and about our new project proposals, which can be found here, and distributed the gadgets (big and small notebooks with the GSoC logos and some Google-pens) sent to us from Mountain View!

The Google Summer of Code 2010 is going to end.

Also this year, we have participated with a Freifunk project on the Freimap Software.

Freimap is an Open Source visualization and analysis framework for (mostly) mesh networks, such as for example Freifunk.net. It can read many a different data source and display them as different layers in a map. The network can be browsed and queried in real time, and a time bar allows to trace back to past events. Some statistics of the topology and network traffic may also be generated. From the last Google Summer of Code 2009, Service Discovery is a new feature.

The software itself runs in Java, and smoothly at that. It reads data from various sources in the network, a database, a file or from a Live Stream (OLSR Routing Protocol, B.A.T.M.A.N., etc).

This year I’ve added this feature: the ability of Freimap to store all visualized data in a MySQL Database.

HOW IT WORKS

In the current version, Freimap can take data from different datasource:

1. a file for a simple visualization: js, xml, txt files (static)
2. a MySQL database (static)
3. Live stream from an OLSR Daemon (dynamic)

If you want to store Live stream with the new “Database output for Freimap” feature you have to follow 2 simple steps. These steps are been simplified with a wizard that appear when you make a choice in the main GUI page.

The first step is a simple Wizard in which you have to insert some basics information such as:

1. MySQL Database information: IP/Hostname and port
2. MySQL Database credentials of an user that have a rw permission
3. Position of the OLSRd config file
4. Position of the LatLon.js file of the NameService Plugin
5. The port of the dotDraw plugin

Once you have entered all the information you can choose a previous “Freimap” Database or to “Create a new Freimap Database”. When you choose a database from a list of available database the application automatically detect if the selected schema contains Freimap data.  This choice read the data from the selected database and continue to store new live data in the same tables. With the second choice you can create a new database. This choice means that you can destroy an old database or you can create a completely new one.

ISSUES AND …TO DO

There is a lot of work to do to improve Freimap Software.

For example, as discussed in the OLSR-Dev Mailing List, there is a needs to make a simple web interface for the config file (now an xml file) in which you can change the base settings of the “Database output for Freimap” feature.

Another thing to do is to find a method to update and generate in a the fastest way a new “layer id” for the recovery of the correct layer when requested.

We have to add the possibility to read and store live data from and in two or more database (also schemas). This can be useful when you want to simulate in the same environment two networks with two different routing protocol (BATMAN and OLSR)

Actually the database information crosses the network in plain text. This means that we have to find a method to encrypt Freimap network data.

You can find more info here: http://wiki.freifunk.net/freimap

Mercurial Repository is here: http://code.google.com/p/freimap/