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This page exists to maintain a registry of information about the
Melbourne Wireless Automagic Firmware Builder [1]
The Firmware Builder allows node-owners to easily create a
preconfigured firmware for a wireless router. Currently, only
Broadcom-based wireless routers are supported, such as the early
Linksys WRT54G versions, the Asus WL-HDD, WL-500G and WL-500G Premium.
The idea behind the Firmware Builder is to reduce the time it takes
to configure and build the operating system for a public wireless
node. Currently, the firmware is based on the Berlin-based Freifunk
Firmware [2]. We hope to add more packages so as to localise the
firmware for Melbourne Wireless.
This page will deal only with the builder itself. The Melbourne
Wireless Firmware that is created by the firmware will be discussed on
this page [3]
Important points to note about the Builder:
* You can only build firmwares for nodes that you own
* You need to be logged into the website to use the firmware builder
* Your node needs to have at least one IP block allocated
* To request an IP allocation, your node needs to have a status of
"testing" or "operational"
Some things to note about the resulting firmware:
* The usual network bridge between the LAN ports and the WiFi [4]
interface is removed in the Freifunk Firmware. The LAN and Wifi
interfaces are separate.
* The WiFi [5] interface will have an IP address equal to the IP
Block network address + 1
* The firmware uses the OLSR routing protocol
* The WiFi [6] interface is considered to be publicly accessable and
is firewalled from the private LAN interface
* The Wifi Interface has a DHCP server active. It is configured to
hand out 5 addresses in the upper half of the /28 allocation.
* DHCP clients on the Wifi interface access the rest of the OLSR
network via NAT running on the router. This means that the DHCP
clients don't need to run the OLSR daemon to access the network. NAT
also offers a level of security to the DHCP clients from the rest of
the network.
* The Wifi radio is configured to run in adhoc mode, on Channel 10.
Adhoc mode allows the node to act as a relay for other OLSR nodes
without necessarily needing to plan links, and allows the network to
be self-healing.
* The Wifi interface has a netmask of 255.255.0.0. This is the
netmask for the whole Melbourne Wireless network. This allows any node
to connect to any other node without needing to pre-plan IP address
ranges. Because the nodes use adhoc mode, Ethernet broadcasts are
limited to the range of the node's own radio - OLSR does not repeat
broadcast traffic across the network. OLSR also only propogates each
routers own host route (/32) by default.
* The OLSR nameservice plugin is active by default. This will mean
that the hostname-ip address lookup tables for all OLSR nodes will be
propogated across the network and will be available via the routers
DNS servers.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/mwfirmware/firmware.php
[2] http://freifunk.net/wiki/FreifunkFirmwareEnglish
[3]
http://melbournewireless.org.au/wiki/index.php?MelbourneWirelessFirmware
[4] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?WiFi
[5] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?WiFi
[6] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?WiFi
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