Setting “smart defaults” is a key to masking complexity and lowering the barrier to uptake.  Think of Google’s search minimalism after Altavista et al or Apple’s simplification of so many applications that were filled with twiddly knobs, checkboxes, and radio buttons in other operating systems that shall remain nameless.    Wordpress is another great example of an application that is capable of impressive sophistication for “blogging software” yet pretty much “just works” after completely a bare minimum of setup information. Terry has taken us one giant step closer towards WordPress-like usability with his Small Enterprise – Campus Network (SECN) setup for Mesh Potatoes.

His goal to be able to serve a local network of modest size offering seamless voice and data.  He wanted any Mesh Potato to pick up Internet connectivity via the ethernet port, if it could find it, and for each Mesh Potato to offer a local WiFi access point.  After experimenting a little bit, he chose to install the BATMAN-ADV mesh protocol instead of BATMAN protocol we currently use.  The big difference between the two protocols is that BATMAN-ADV runs at Layer 2 and BATMAN at Layer 3 of the OSI layer model.  What does that mean?  Well the simplest explanation is that BATMAN-ADV makes Mesh Potatoes behave as if they were all part of one big network switch which means that IP addressing and routing for the network is dramatically simplified as each Mesh Potato is effectively transparent to the IP network.  This effectively removes the hassle of figuring out network addressing and Network Address Translation for Mesh Potatoes.  Everything is just one flat network which means that devices can easily communicate with each other on the network.  The flip side of this is that you have to be careful about what you put on the network because a poorly configured or worse infected computer can generate a lot of local network traffic.  This is something we’re exploring but for a small network, BATMAN-ADV seems to work exceedingly well.

With Terry’s modifications, an SECN configured Mesh Potato network will now:

• offer an encrypted, WPA-enabled, wireless access point as well as a peer-to-peer wireless connection on each mesh Potato.  This is done by creating a Virtual Access Point (VAP) on the same radio interface as the mesh.  Initially we chose not to enable this by default on the core Mesh Potato distribution because we were concerned about network data load have an impact on voice quality but Terry’s work makes me think that this was a mistake.  Much better to encourage use and solve the problem of over-use rather than ensure a functional but underused network;
• pick up a network connection from any DHCP-enabled Internet-connected device it is connected to the ethernet port on the Mesh Potato;
• transparently carry DHCP requests over the network to devices connected to Mesh Potatoes whether by ethernet or WiFi; and,
• offer simple on-network and also VoIP service provider configurable phone calling.  Local phones can be dialed simply by entering the last 3 digits of the IP address of the Mesh Potato you want to call or the Mesh Potatoes can be registered with any VoIP service provider.

The long and short of this is that if you plug in a bunch of SECN-configured Mesh Potatoes and make sure at least one is connected to something simple like a DHCP-enabled ADSL router, then you have a transparent, highly-adaptable technology for creating a robust local telephone and data network with no wires.

So, did Terry do this all by himself?  Without Terry’s interest and hard work at testing, reconfiguring, debugging the SECN version might never have happened but one of the great things about Open Source is that one is rarely starting from scratch.  He was able to build on the configuration that Elektra built for the Mesh Potato which in turn built on great Open Source initiatives like OpenWRT, Asterisk, and others.  And at least a dozen people in the Village Telco community were there to help him solve problems and answer questions.  Better still his work inspired others to try out new configurations with the Mesh Potato and Elektra was inspired to take the set of instructions that he had developed and embed them in a new Mesh Potato firmware distribution that people can use to set up smaller Village Telco networks to serve both voice and data.

If you’re interested in trying this out yourself, you’ll need a few Mesh Potatoes to start and then you’ll want to download the latest SECN firmware and flash the Mesh Potatoes with this new firmware.  Terry has been developing the documentation for the SECN, the latest version of which is here.  Because this is still at an early stage, that URL may change.  Best to check in with the Village Telco google group to find the latest version.

In terms of a place to pilot a Village Telco, it sits above the demographic we intended the Village Telco for but it seemed a good choice for a number of reasons:

1. There is a really strong community.  There are strong social bonds linking everyone in the Bo-kaap and strong social bonds means a strong desire to communicate locally.  This was the strongest motivator for choosing the Bo-kaap
2. We’re still learning and don’t want to create a dependency on something that is still evolving. The fact that Bo-kaap community is a little wealthier on average than our target community means that although they may value the Village Telco, they won’t be completely stuffed up if something goes wrong as we perfect the network.
3. It’s convenient.  Tempting as it is to set up a rural Village Telco right away, the Bo-kaap is not many minutes away for me so easy to get to and work on.

At the right you can see a screenshot from the Afrimesh software that we use to monitor the mesh.  Right now we’re up to about 50 nodes in the mesh and the increasing density continues to make things easier and easier.  In the beginning we had to be very careful about long links and used some Ubiquity Nanostation IIs to make some of the long shots.  We also had to be very careful about getting the Mesh Potatoes into a strategic position to pick-up other Mesh Potatoes.  Now, once I get up on someone’s roof, I can usually see a Mesh Potato in some direction so installation is as simple as finding something to attach the Mesh Potato to.  TV antenna’s have proven to be very convenient in this regard.

The installation process for the Bo-kaap has been slow, partly because it took a long time to get production Mesh Potatoes into our hand but also because the Bo-kaap is an old community and the houses in it have evolved more than they have been planned.  Each house is a little exercise in complexity in terms of getting to the roof, finding a cable path down from the roof, finding power near the desire location of the phone, etc.  I’ve got it down to a routine now though.  Having the right tools like a long concrete drill bit for going through walls are simple things that make life a lot easier.

We’re learning a lot as we install the Bo-kaap Village Telco.  We decided to offer 100 Mesh Potatoes to the community in exchange for user feedback on the Village Telco.  In order to build the most useful network possible, we built connections by following social ties, a bit like snowball sampling in research.  We started with a family that ran a cafe and followed their social ties, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbours.  Each new person is at liberty to suggest others.  By following existing strong social ties, the Village Telco immediately begins to delivery high-value connections.  An older mother-in-law that wants to stay in touch with her family who are only a few doors away but it is hard for her to get around.  A mother who recently became a grandmother wants to stay in touch with her daughter.  In each of these cases, they could use a mobile phone to call but like the majority of people in South Africa they are conscious of what time spent on the phone costs them.  A local Village Telco call is free.

Mesh Potatoes can be gateway-ed to other telecom networks and can also offer Internet services but for the time being we are just offering local voice because the devices do that on their own at no additional cost.  Once the community is ready to take over the network themselves and manage external voice and Internet charges, we’ll enable those other features.  Stand by for more from the Bo-kaap Village Telco.

The first Beta Mesh Potato

These early Betas are running revision 203 firmware, which has Afrimesh as the primary GUI with Luci available for “advanced” configuration options. Thanks Elektra and Antoine for your fine work on the Mesh Potato GUI.

Here is Joel’s experience – our #1 Beta MP01 tester! Joel is pretty geeky (he has contributed for several years to the OLPC project) but has never used a Mesh Potato before. I hope this information will be useful for other Beta testers who should be getting their Mesh Potatoes over the next few weeks. I stood back through most of Joel’s beta experience – I wanted to see how other people approach the Mesh Potato.

How Joel Configured His Mesh Potato

1. The default Ethernet IP is 192.168.1.20. Joel plugged a cross over Ethernet cable into the MP01, although a regular cable should be OK.
2. He then logged in via telnet, and set the password from the command line using the “passwd” command. Setting the password activated ssh and disabled telnet. This password also becomes the web admin password.
3. Joel then pointed his browser at 192.168.1.20 and the Web GUI came up.
4. He changed the 10.130.1.20 “IP Address” to a unique IP on the mesh. Joel selected 10.130.1.123. This is the only change you need to start making phone calls between Mesh Potatoes. This IP address becomes your phone number, for example dialing 123 on the mesh will make Joel’s phone ring. Note this only changes the mesh Wifi IP – the Ethernet IP is still 192.168.1.20. The Ethernet IP can be changed via the Luci Network Menu.
   

   Setting the Wifi IP on the Mesh Potato

   Note the settings are applied automatically – there is no “save” button, although I understand that this will be present on later firmware as out of habit we all look for a save button! To apply the settings (i.e. change the actual Wifi settings) we rebooted (power cycled) our MP01.

   We also changed the Wifi channel and BSSID to match the mesh settings of a couple of earlier Potatoes. This is not really necessary, the default Wifi channel and BSSID are probably OK for you.

That’s it – the main step is just change the mesh Wifi IP to something other than 10.130.20. Then reboot and you can start making calls between Mesh potatoes.

Easier Configuration

A slightly easier way is:

1. Point your web browser at 192.168.1.20, login with user/password root/admin.
2. Simply change the Wifi IP from 10.130.1.x to 10.130.1.yourchoice.
3. Power cycle your potato.

Configuration without a Web browser

1. Power up your Potato and connect a phone, after about 1 minute you will get dial tone.
2. Dial CONF (2663) and you will hear HAL 9000 talking to you!
3. Enter the new Wifi IP, e.g. 10*130*1*123

Joel asked a good question – what do all the LEDs mean? They are not labeled although from memory it’s power/Ethernet/Wifi activity etc. I asked Edwin@Atcom about this and the reason was the vinyl labels hadn’t arrived when the first few betas shipped. The rest of the Betas will have these labels for the LEDs.