More from Radio Boy...

A friend of mine, a few Christmases back, bought me a couple of old serial books, part of the "Radio Boys" series, about a group of boys experimenting with radios (new-fangled, high-tech stuff). They make me smile every time I look over at them - from the 1920s, the language is somewhat odd, but the stories are cute.

I'm trying to find the "perfect" radio system for this product. The perfect radio system will be no-config - just power it up and it will figure out its role. Each node should automatically configure itself as a gateway, repeater, or client (or, even better, repeater-client). I know this is possible, because the Open-Mesh boxes do it. They're just not suitable for outdoor use.

So far, the Ubiquiti radios (I have been testing the NanoStation 2) have won the day - mostly open-source firmware, with a very nice SDK for developing new extensions. The only problem is that the only "meshing" protocol that comes with them is WDS with STP. It actually works pretty well, and will get the job done. However, it requires more setup than I like (not automatic configuration) and doesn't use the "best" encryption algorithm (WEP vs. WPA).

The Open-Mesh boxes run an interesting mix of software, and they can use either B.A.T.M.A.N. or OLSR as the meshing protocol. I recently changed my Open-Mesh boxes from B.A.T.M.A.N. to OLSR and noticed no difference in performance. Running either of these protocols would seem to be a possible solution, but I'd have to change my NanoStations over to OpenWRT, which I am somewhat reluctant to do.

However, I recently found a fellow in Austria who has ported OLSR to Ubiquiti's AirOS as part of a "free wi-fi network" project - see https://wiki.graz.funkfeuer.at/UbntStations.

So I downloaded the SDK, code, patches, and other files from ubnt.com and from funkfeuer.at, and made myself a firmware file for the NanoStation 2 (on about the fifth try - hey, I haven't done real software development for over 15 years!) I loaded it on to one of the Nanos, fired it up, turned it on, and it was running happily.

There are still some small glitches to be worked out before this solution is ready for prime time, so, for now, we'll keep going with WDS. However, the more I read about OLSR the more excited I am about it. The benefits for the Ayrstone customers are great.