Mesh Networking – Router / Firmware Upgrade | SmileItsOk Tech Blog
Mesh Networking – Router / Firmware Upgrade
January 26, 2011 / smileitsok posted in Networking / No Comments
Router Platform
A number of OS’s have been produced for standard routers, enabling them to utilise alternative software including routing algorithms.
DD-WRT
OpenWRT
FreeWRT
Tomato Firmware
Sveasoft
Mesh networking can be deployed on most Wi-Fi enabled hardware, most protocols can be implemented in Linux environments utilising either a small pc based package (e.g Locustword) or a more specialised router which are generally cheaper, more compact and use less power. Ideally the solution would be compact cheap and standalone.
The buffalo WHR-G54S costing around £25 is very compact, has a low input voltage of 3.3V and low power consumption, stated in the manual as 6.5 Watts maximum. This router is compatible with many of the firmware flavours listed above (WHR-G54S-Manual, 2007)
The WHR-G54S is based on the Broadcom 5352 router system chip, details of which can be found on the Broadcom specification sheet (5352EL Broadcom, 2008);
CPU frequency 200-MHZ
16-KB instructional cache, 8-KB data cache and 256-KB prefetch cache
wireless LAN 802.11b/g radio
5 port fast Ethernet switch (1 port for WAN interface)
Serial interface
16 General Purpose Input Outputs
Supports up to 256 MB of RAM
The WHR-G54S includes 16MB of RAM and 4MB flash memory, this is capable of running a stripped down version of Open-WRT / Freifunk. Features of the Broadcom 5352 chip, such as the GPIOs and the serial data port can be utilised, this would involve disassembling router and soldering in new components. (SD-MMC hack, 2008)
Router Platform Initial Setup
Initially to flash the buffalo wgr-g54s TFTP must be used in binary mode to upload the firmware more information about the TFTP in the specification site (ien133, 2008).
The alternative firmware must be uploaded at the beginning of the routers boot sequence, this can be pinpointed by pinging the router via a wired connection (In windows -t option pings the host until asked to stop). Restarting the router stops the ping reply, when the reply begins again tftp is used to upload the new firmware.
The mesh nodes were flashed with Freifunk which is based on OpenWRT and has been customised by a community project based in Germany: http://wiki.freifunk.net/FreifunkFirmwareEnglish
Internet Connectivity Sharing
Dynamic gateway functionality was added by installing the dyn-gw package, this feature enables the mesh routers to announce the presence of an external internet gateway if one is connected to the WAN port on any router. The dyn-gw package is useful for sharing inernet connections, the package was tested and each router when connected to the web server was now automatically enable communities to share internet connections.
Standalone Mesh Node
Using 3 rechargable AA batteries I was able to power the device while surfing the internet and transferring files for 2.5 hours.
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kw: mesh, networking, freedom, p2p, internet, bitcoin, asterisk, google, google voice, android, root, free, wireless, data, linux, voip, voice
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