Mpumulanga Mesh - Revision history

Kingdavid at 23:42, 6 April 2007

2007-04-06T23:42:16Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:42, 7 April 2007
Line 132:		Line 132:


	== 3 April, 2007 Tuesday ==		== 3 April, 2007 Tuesday All mesh nodes working and support and maintenance handed over to Compuright ==

	Woke up wondering how it was going to be possible to get through all the sites I had to visit and possibly do some major repair work at some of them. So I had a double bowl of Pronutro to prepare me for the big day. First stop was US Aid, I found and that Jan and Alan were on holiday but their house sitter, a lovely old welsh lady by the name of Diane, helped me out. I was expecting the worst because the node was not responsive but simply rebooting it again proved to do the trick and I got it up and running within a few minutes – another one of those to flag for Sven Ola. I quickly hooked up her PC to the network and she said it was much faster than the slow telkom line she uses at home.		Woke up wondering how it was going to be possible to get through all the sites I had to visit and possibly do some major repair work at some of them. So I had a double bowl of Pronutro to prepare me for the big day. First stop was US Aid, I found and that Jan and Alan were on holiday but their house sitter, a lovely old welsh lady by the name of Diane, helped me out. I was expecting the worst because the node was not responsive but simply rebooting it again proved to do the trick and I got it up and running within a few minutes – another one of those to flag for Sven Ola. I quickly hooked up her PC to the network and she said it was much faster than the slow telkom line she uses at home.
Line 148:		Line 148:


	== 2 April, 2007 Monday ==		== 2 April, 2007 Monday Lightening strikes the firewall again ==

	Arrived with my car and trailer and family at the ACTS clinic at about 11:30AM. My first set of tasks was to tackle all the problems at the ACTS clinic itself. Harry had moved the firewall and server down to the main clinic building and had no luck getting the firewall up and running. Harry had done a good job, everything was connected up correctly but the firewall was not responding at all. The next thought was to reach the firewall via the serial port, no serial port cross over cables were lying around, so my next task was to hack together a cross over from bits and pieces of modem serial cables I could find. This proved a long and arduous task with my primitive soldering iron – but after about an hour and a half I finally connected up the firewall with my shiny new cross over to the firewall. I poked around in the firewall and found that all the Ethernet ports were down, I later discovered that lightening was the culprit again.		Arrived with my car and trailer and family at the ACTS clinic at about 11:30AM. My first set of tasks was to tackle all the problems at the ACTS clinic itself. Harry had moved the firewall and server down to the main clinic building and had no luck getting the firewall up and running. Harry had done a good job, everything was connected up correctly but the firewall was not responding at all. The next thought was to reach the firewall via the serial port, no serial port cross over cables were lying around, so my next task was to hack together a cross over from bits and pieces of modem serial cables I could find. This proved a long and arduous task with my primitive soldering iron – but after about an hour and a half I finally connected up the firewall with my shiny new cross over to the firewall. I poked around in the firewall and found that all the Ethernet ports were down, I later discovered that lightening was the culprit again.
Line 158:		Line 158:


	== 13 October, 2006 Friday ==		== 13 October, 2006 Friday Heloise visits our sites and finds new people who can use the mesh ==

	Started the day with ACTS staff in their morning prayer and singing time.		Started the day with ACTS staff in their morning prayer and singing time.
Line 183:		Line 183:
	Tired we drove home much later then usual.		Tired we drove home much later then usual.

	== 12 October, 2006 Thursday ==		== 12 October, 2006 Thursday David swaps the lightening damaged firewall for a shiny new one ==

	Managed to get a car with large boot and no aircon. Heloise from IDRC is coming with us so had some entertaining and thoughtful talks on the way up. Left late as usual.		Managed to get a car with large boot and no aircon. Heloise from IDRC is coming with us so had some entertaining and thoughtful talks on the way up. Left late as usual.
Line 191:		Line 191:


	== 25 august, 2006 Friday ==		== 25 august, 2006 Friday Even an Ethernet connection needs love and care ==

	David was determined to find out what strange things were happening with the firewall and he phoned John, our trusty FreeBSD guru, back at the CSIR to get some advice. It seemed that the Ethernet connection between the firewall and the Linksys box was faulty. Eventually John worked out that it was some low level Ethernet timing problem in the driver and he made the fix – retarted everything and we were back to a free flowing 100Mb/s Ethernet pipe.		David was determined to find out what strange things were happening with the firewall and he phoned John, our trusty FreeBSD guru, back at the CSIR to get some advice. It seemed that the Ethernet connection between the firewall and the Linksys box was faulty. Eventually John worked out that it was some low level Ethernet timing problem in the driver and he made the fix – retarted everything and we were back to a free flowing 100Mb/s Ethernet pipe.
Line 199:		Line 199:
	Rushed home so that Dwayne could attend DST's Open Source launch.		Rushed home so that Dwayne could attend DST's Open Source launch.

	== 24 August, 2006 Thursday ==		== 24 August, 2006 Thursday Shiny new server with 240Gig harddrive installed ==

	Chris was arriving around lunch time with the shiny server. We decided to go from place to place to get our network up. First US Aid. All seemed OK, power was on. We had to open the box, it seemed to have gone into some non operational state. We reset it and upgraded the firmware. The box was now alive and well. More positive was that the rest of the network looked healthy. The schools was still up, our lesson about leaving it on clearly had worked. Plus Agnus' node was also up.		Chris was arriving around lunch time with the shiny server. We decided to go from place to place to get our network up. First US Aid. All seemed OK, power was on. We had to open the box, it seemed to have gone into some non operational state. We reset it and upgraded the firmware. The box was now alive and well. More positive was that the rest of the network looked healthy. The schools was still up, our lesson about leaving it on clearly had worked. Plus Agnus' node was also up.
Line 218:		Line 218:

	Stopped of at the clinic and saw that many pretty women had left notes for David. Well actually had left notes for the Wifi guys but stuck it on David's door :) Seems the people most interested in this network are visiting clinic volunteers! Promised to look into things.		Stopped of at the clinic and saw that many pretty women had left notes for David. Well actually had left notes for the Wifi guys but stuck it on David's door :) Seems the people most interested in this network are visiting clinic volunteers! Promised to look into things.

	Finished the day off with supper with Harry and Margie from the clinic.		Finished the day off with supper with Harry and Margie from the clinic.

Line 223:		Line 224:


	== 23 August, 2006 Wednesday ==		== 23 August, 2006 Wednesday David forgets to bring shiny new server - Chris Morris comes to the rescue ==

	Got car with ... large car. Bounced from a B class to a C class. Must try fathom how David got this right! Needless to say we got a boot.		Got car with ... large car. Bounced from a B class to a C class. Must try fathom how David got this right! Needless to say we got a boot.

Kingdavid at 23:31, 6 April 2007

2007-04-06T23:31:26Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:31, 7 April 2007
Line 130:		Line 130:

	== News Flashes ==		== News Flashes ==


			== 3 April, 2007 Tuesday ==

			Woke up wondering how it was going to be possible to get through all the sites I had to visit and possibly do some major repair work at some of them. So I had a double bowl of Pronutro to prepare me for the big day. First stop was US Aid, I found and that Jan and Alan were on holiday but their house sitter, a lovely old welsh lady by the name of Diane, helped me out. I was expecting the worst because the node was not responsive but simply rebooting it again proved to do the trick and I got it up and running within a few minutes – another one of those to flag for Sven Ola. I quickly hooked up her PC to the network and she said it was much faster than the slow telkom line she uses at home.
			I made contact with Mr Sehlabela from Sikhile high and he agreed to meet me at the school even though it was school holidays. When we got to the school lab, I noticed that it had changed again, they had put all the computers in small cubicles which makes absolutely no sense when you think that learning is all about sharing and group work. I also saw that all the computers had been given static IP's which again makes no sense if you want to have flexibility, are they scared of DHCP? Anyway I didn't want to meddle in the affairs of the computer lab so I quickly had a look at what was going on with the node and found it unplugged and the Ethernet cables were swapped around on the “Power over Ethernet” injector ... mmm more education on how to keep a mesh node running needed. I got Mr Sehlabela's skype up and running again – he had forgotten his password – seems there is a basic law that if someone doesn't use something for more than a few weeks, their password will be quickly forgotten. He wanted me to come and fix his home computer and had a list of things that he wanted help with – I could have helped, but this was not the time and something had to change in his attitude about why we do all of this for him. I still think he feels the rich city people must help him when computers break, they must teach his Java class, they must fix all his networking problems, fix his computer at home. Where is the “I want to turn this situation around and make this lab a dynamic fun learning environment and start putting myself into the problems and start using my own ideas”?. I was shocked that he was teaching his pupils Java, and he hardly knows how to fill in information in a web browser, he also admitted that he knew nothing about what he was teaching them. The sad tale is that this is probably a very common story in thousands of rural schools around the country.

			Next stop Kok farm, This was a simple problem, the Linksys was unplugged. The unplugging behaviour, seems to follow a simple law of nature. If this thing doesn't work for a week, then there is no point keeping it plugged in but there is a useful two prong plug adapter here we can use for our hair-dryer when we can't find one. I showed Henry, Kobus' business partner, how the network works and explained the whole concept of mesh to him. He had an interesting question about being payed site rental for someone putting an ugly antenna on your roof – I realised that there is a very entrenched operator based thinking still in peoples minds when it comes to putting up infrastructure, where money is payed to hire site space ... the community ownership model will take a while to sink in. But he was very convinced that selling internet through the mesh will work well amongst farmers because they are unhappy with their slow GPRS. He knew Ray Smith well and was happy that he was taking over the running of the mesh.

			I then had to rush back to the accommodation block for lunch with Ray. I handed over all the spare equipment from the project to him and explained what was there. I told him that it would be kept in a locked up trommel with a combination lock at the ACTS clinic for him to use whenever something breaks. I also handed over a manual which explains how the network works and has contact details for all the sights. We discussed the business model for quite a while. He had a good solution to connect the Peebles valley mesh back to white river using a repeater above Petra. This Repeater would have line of site to a school and a water tower in White river which would connect to the new White river and farmer mesh network. He will basically be reselling bulk ADSL at less than half of what they are paying for 3G. He agreed that low income earners across the valley and schools could be given an option of the first 20 or 30 Meg free per month and thereafter having the option of buying up more bandwidth on a pay as you go basis.

			Samuel and Luke were getting really restless so I went into White river and took them to a nice place with farm animals, I left Nula and the boys there while I went back to tackle my final site, Legogote hospice.

			I got to Legogote and found the mesh router, pole and antenna all lying on the patio. It had been taken down due to some building alterations that were being done at the hospice. It took me about 20 minutes to found all the bits and pieces but after finding everything I found another able bodied male nurse to help me install the node again. We got the bracket and mast up, clamped on the mesh router and re-layed a new Ethernet cable down to the room where they kept the VoIP phone. By now it was getting towards 5 and I had to rush back to pick up the kids, I brought the whole family back to the hospice to finish the job. I took out the old PC that was there which wasn't working, it wasn't really needed anyway because the big shiny new blue 3 terminal digital doorway on the Stoep was far more than this measly computer could ever hope to be. I taped down all the cables, connected the VoIP phone and to my extreme joy I managed to make a phone call back to the Clinic.

			By know my body was really aching from the Cold I had caught the day before, so we headed back to the accommodation block, packed up our stuff and I tried to complete my final task of getting the Reverse ssh tunnel working from my linux server. After struggling for about 2 hours with public keys and authentication problems, I eventually hacked together a solution that would work only until the next reboot or until the VSAT reset itself, I gave up trying to get it to work through a reset and hoped that it would still be running by the time I got back to Pretoria to finish the task. By now Nula was not happy with me, it was 8PM and we were going to drive back to Pretoria in the dark and in the rain and arrive back at midnight. So we packed the car and headed back in terrible weather, the rain was so thick that I sometimes had drive at about 40 km/h because my wipers couldn't get enough water off the windscreen. We arrived back in Pretoria at about 1:00AM having achieved the impossible.


			== 2 April, 2007 Monday ==

			Arrived with my car and trailer and family at the ACTS clinic at about 11:30AM. My first set of tasks was to tackle all the problems at the ACTS clinic itself. Harry had moved the firewall and server down to the main clinic building and had no luck getting the firewall up and running. Harry had done a good job, everything was connected up correctly but the firewall was not responding at all. The next thought was to reach the firewall via the serial port, no serial port cross over cables were lying around, so my next task was to hack together a cross over from bits and pieces of modem serial cables I could find. This proved a long and arduous task with my primitive soldering iron – but after about an hour and a half I finally connected up the firewall with my shiny new cross over to the firewall. I poked around in the firewall and found that all the Ethernet ports were down, I later discovered that lightening was the culprit again.

			I quickly setup a backup plan and installed a bridge, put the mesh server on the ACTS network subnet, and changed ACTS_CLINIC node IP to a routeable address on the ACTS network. The Linksys would now have to act as a firewall, but I didn't have time to slap together any clever iptables scripts to do what our FreeBSD firewall was doing.
			The accommodation block linksys node had disappeared, so I put up one of our spares and configured it to dish out DHCP addresses on the wireless network. This worked nicely and I demonstrated a google page loading to my suitably impressed wife in deep rural Africa.
			I noticed that the ACTS_FLAT node was dead so my next task was to figure this out. I climbed up on the roof and opened the box – all the lights were blinking away but I couldn't get any connectivity on the Ethernet or wireless side. I reset the box and everything worked again – this was another thing to flag – sometimes these nodes get stuck and need to be reset. So I need to send an another email to to Sven Ola, Freifunk's architect, about this. I then hooked up Avery's computer to the network and she was gleaming with joy, now that she could email all her relatives from her flat again. I noticed that the switch that our toasted firewall was plugged into was completely dead, which explains why our poor firewall didn't survive the strike.
			So now all the mesh networking at ACTS was up and running, it was time for a break and some Battlestar Galactica movies on my laptop. After the movie I decided to try and get reverse port forwarding working from my Linux server so that I can continue supporting the network from home, but had no luck, got tired and went to sleep


	== 13 October, 2006 Friday ==		== 13 October, 2006 Friday ==

Kingdavid at 20:42, 19 October 2006

2006-10-19T20:42:48Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:42, 19 October 2006
Line 130:		Line 130:

	== News Flashes ==		== News Flashes ==

			== 13 October, 2006 Friday ==

			Started the day with ACTS staff in their morning prayer and singing time.
			We hadn't planned to visit Alan and Jan of USAid but it was a very good thing we did. Their node was off, lightning? Well none of that, a house sitter had moved the plug and inadvertantly switched off the node. We got it up and running again. Showed Alan some things and got them onto Skype. Heloise spoke to Jan at length and got the low down on why they didn't want to use the network:
			* Goes down at night and weekends
			* Unreliable
			* 3G allows them to use it when travelling

			But what Heloise did coax from Jan was that her housekeeper was doing a computer course. And we then discovered that one of the staff staying on site was studying at the TUT satellite campus in Nelspruit. Studying Engineering! Victoria, the housekeeper had inherited a share in a security business from her brother. Not content to take a passive role she has insisted on getting involved in the business. Firstly getting a driving license and car and now teaching herself about computers. David and Dwayne chatted and it would be quite easy to setup a node on their houses which are slightly away from the main house, but then decided that giving a simple kit might be a better approach. David later got most of the kit together and we dropped it off then we visited Gundella. The site give us a panoramic view of the whole valley. A yagi should give good coverage and its back lobe should pick up the node on USAid. A very good site and also a nice social experiment to get buy in from some real users. Who as Heloise said – have no choice – they cannot afford 3G or other solutions.
			Off to Hospice to fix the network card and install SIP phone. Heloise and Dwayne left David there and proceeded to the school. Realised that the reason we had a good connection between the Hospice and USAid was because the antennae had shifted about 20 degree off alignment with Kok farm and was now pointing to USAid. It seems that you can in fact go through mountains if you signal is suitably focussed. David decided to reinstall ubuntu with the new network card installed as the ubuntu had been severly disembowelled. After reinstalling the built in ethernet and the new PCI ethernet card were detected and worked perfectly so something went wrong with the drivers in the previous Ubuntu setup.

			Our visit to the high school was very frustrating. Mr Sehlabela has been a key person in the school and we got the lay of the land in terms of schools from him. We also got a node up at the school because of him. The school has a lab that was originally insatlled by netday and has been upgraded by Eskom. All key indicators to us that they were active. However, on the day we visited Mr S he asked when the Internet would be up. Dwayne simply switched on the main computer and it was there. It had been there for over 2 months and just needed someone to surf. David had had telephone conversations with Mr S to get him going but he seemed insistant that we do it personally. We got the Internet up and then proceeded to explore. Unfortunately it was in this time we realised that Mr S was not himself computer literate even though he is head of department for the whole computer lab. This was quite shocking and we need to review his role in the mesh. On the upside, at the same time as he was telling us that no one uses the Internet we looked across and saw a young man doing just that – surfing! Dwayne and Heloise spoke to him later. He is a teacher at the school who just happened to walk in while we demoed Google to Mr S. He thought oh the internet is up, turned on a computer and began reading his Yahoo mail.... and looking for a new job :(

			Our visit at the school took rather long so David felt a bit abandoned at the Hospice. But he got the Ethernet card in. We met Duminsai's mom (Ainnah Nyundu) who works as a sister at the Hospice. Later feedback from Margie was that Sister Shabs (main Hospice sister) didn't want the computer as her staff weren't doing their jobs! Duminsani's brother, Godfrey who is only 13, was there and David showed him how to install various games. Later in the day we observed him trying to install a Java plugin so that he could play various Java games. See games are the way to build a future computer generation! David also did an interview with Ainnah. He started by asking if she had used a computer, to which the answer was No. At this point all further prepared questions were thrown out and the interview focused on how she managed to raise such bright young children. She has 6 children, 2 are at university, 1 has an IT job, 1 is a chef and the other 2 are still at school, 1 of which is Godfrey our geek in the making. Dumisani, her second son learnt to use a computer while living in Kriel at the Kriel computer centre and at the youth centre. He also did a 6 month microsoft course in Johannesburg at the Standford Business College (Not to be confused with THE Standford!) He then worked at ACTS as a data capturer for a while and is presently doing computer based graphic design for a company in Whiteriver but is very interested in starting his own internet cafe in peebles and possibly being contracted to support the growth of the mesh network.

			Back to the clinic for lunch. We had planned to meet with Harry and Margie but since the clinic was quiet for the day we decided to meet later after the clinic closed early. Ray Smith, who does IT support for the clinic, had managed to contact David through the CSIR. Very funny since he didn't know how good his contacts where. We met with him to discuss mesh networks as he wants to set one up in White River. This turned out to be very exciting and Ray had all the best people round the table. Heloise gave some very good input on social and regulatory issues. David on tech and Dwayne – ate sandwiches :) The exciting part is that Ray is seriously looking at linking the clinic to White River and has all the right contacts. White River is ideal as its well healed yet most people are unable to get ADSL. Ray has subsequently told us that even the municipality is prepared to allow them to use their water towers as mesh realy points. One of these water towers can see the mountain behind the clinic and can also reach Margie and Harry's house in white river.

			We installed a SIP phone at the clinic reception and then returned to the Hospice to get the other SIP phone installed.

			Then off to Portia to get Skype and Gmail up and running. Got it all installed, took some nice pictures of Portia, Agnes and family outside the house with rusty, wrong pointing antenna. Dwayne took some short clips of Portia using the computer and talking about what she does on it. She has certainly searched for every talk show host and their websites! She plays cards, as every computer user seems to, when the Internet is down. She has written a CV. We talked a bit about her helping Mr S at the school to teach computers.

			Heloise managed to convince us (and Gundela – a volunteer nurse at the clinic) that we should get internet working for her. This seemed like a good idea actually as Gundella has access to the clinic and could address issues such as the Telkom 24hr Internet switch off. Proceed to her house and to drop of the mesh kit for Alan. Without a USB wifi adapter we decided to us a Linksys and connect the laptop over Ethernet to the Linksys. All was well until we discovered that the laptop has no Ethernet port

			Tired we drove home much later then usual.

			== 12 October, 2006 Thursday ==

			Managed to get a car with large boot and no aircon. Heloise from IDRC is coming with us so had some entertaining and thoughtful talks on the way up. Left late as usual.

			We arrived at acts at about 9:30PM and David noticed that Avery's light was still on and decided to quickly swap out the toasted firewall. It was literally an plug and play experience – within 30 seconds the network was up and running again. Noticed that US Aid was down
			Most of the rest of our planned activities for the night like setting up all the SIP phones were held off till the morning as it was getting late.


	== 25 august, 2006 Friday ==		== 25 august, 2006 Friday ==

Kingdavid at 13:17, 2 October 2006

2006-10-02T13:17:48Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:17, 2 October 2006
Line 208:		Line 208:

	I explain the firewall rules that have been set up to save the precious 2Gig cap on the VSAT and Harry agrees that 250Meg for the farmers and 250 Meg for the school should be OK. He is also happy with the dynamic bandwidth allocation rules which look as follows:		I explain the firewall rules that have been set up to save the precious 2Gig cap on the VSAT and Harry agrees that 250Meg for the farmers and 250 Meg for the school should be OK. He is also happy with the dynamic bandwidth allocation rules which look as follows:

			[[Image:firewall_policy.png]]

	The Peebles Valley mesh network in Mpumalanga consists of the following players		The Peebles Valley mesh network in Mpumalanga consists of the following players

Kingdavid at 13:13, 2 October 2006

2006-10-02T13:13:09Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:13, 2 October 2006
Line 123:		Line 123:
	[[Image:Acts meshnet.jpg]]		[[Image:Acts meshnet.jpg]]

			== Current status of the network ==

			This is a satellite view of the network showing all the links as of 20 September 2006
			[[Image:Peebles-mesh.jpg]]

Kingdavid at 13:02, 2 October 2006

2006-10-02T13:02:54Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:02, 2 October 2006
Line 126:		Line 126:

	== News Flashes ==		== News Flashes ==

			== 25 august, 2006 Friday ==

			David was determined to find out what strange things were happening with the firewall and he phoned John, our trusty FreeBSD guru, back at the CSIR to get some advice. It seemed that the Ethernet connection between the firewall and the Linksys box was faulty. Eventually John worked out that it was some low level Ethernet timing problem in the driver and he made the fix – retarted everything and we were back to a free flowing 100Mb/s Ethernet pipe.

			We left the final Debian box installing (a trip over a power cable rendered the first partially completed install null and void). This box will be installed at the hospice.

			Rushed home so that Dwayne could attend DST's Open Source launch.

			== 24 August, 2006 Thursday ==

			Chris was arriving around lunch time with the shiny server. We decided to go from place to place to get our network up. First US Aid. All seemed OK, power was on. We had to open the box, it seemed to have gone into some non operational state. We reset it and upgraded the firmware. The box was now alive and well. More positive was that the rest of the network looked healthy. The schools was still up, our lesson about leaving it on clearly had worked. Plus Agnus' node was also up.

			Next stop Kok Farm. Met with Kobus, he has just got a 3G card which he was struggling with. We plugged the box in, upgraded and checked. The network was up. We promised Kobus that we would be back later in the day.

			Now our last node – the Hospice. Kok farm has enough height to, we hope jump over the ridge, to get to the hospice. We were never able to predict line of sight. But today we can try. We arrived and our antennae was now pointing in the oposite direction. David realigned, we upgraded the software again and viola. A connection from the hospice to kok farm. We now have a fully functional network.

			Chris met us at the hospice and we showed him around. Back for lunch and a meeting with Chris and Harry while David and Dare install the server. Chris quized Harry about the reason why he was interested in the project, what the clinic wanted and various other things. Chris wrote notes, we must get those :)

			Dwayne and Chris visited Agnus' house while David continued with the server. But first stop the school. Being after 13:00 there was no hope that anyone would be around. Luckily the lab was open. Dwayne booted up a computer and checked the net connectivity. All working. Chris and Dwayne talked a bit about the school as a partner and their expectiations, the computer lab, etc

			Agnus was at home casting a new front porch. We upgraded the computer and talked to the twins. When asked what they did on the computer they said that they had tried to play music and did a lot of solitaire (like computer users everywhere!). The upgrade went well we even got a h323 session between David and us. David was hacking things on the server.

			We did another round of visits the participating nodes, mostly to demonstrate the connection to the new shiny server. The server by the way has: Wikipedia, MediaWiki, a music streamer and ZX Spectrum games. Firstly we visited Alan. We managed to stream music to his computer. It seemed however that Microsoft Media player was not as good as the Linux equivalents at displaying playlists so it was not as impressive. We met Jan on the way out, she has just returned from Jhb. She was singing the praises of 3G. It seems that in this environment it is a real win. It provides enough speed and much much improved reliability, even in this setting. Community networks should probably be using it as their connection to the Internet. Unfortuntely we feel for many people it may negate even the usefullness of a community network, which would be a shame. But with a server with many useful tools it seems a community network can still be useful.

			Last stop Kobus at Kok Farm. As always we were running late, but this was going to be a quick one. At our first visit that morning we realised that Kobus would not be able to connect as the node was in another room and not close to his office. We setup a Linksys on his office desk. But couldn't connect, something was dragging our firewall down. We tried various things, even calling Alan to see if he was steaming audio. Eventually David reset the firewall and was able to get some remote desktop control software off the local server and install it on Kobus' laptop in case he needed some remote help. We had to leave it there to get to Harry are Margie for supper. We told him to try the network later and let us know how it worked.

			Stopped of at the clinic and saw that many pretty women had left notes for David. Well actually had left notes for the Wifi guys but stuck it on David's door :) Seems the people most interested in this network are visiting clinic volunteers! Promised to look into things.
			Finished the day off with supper with Harry and Margie from the clinic.

			Returned home and David setup a box which we left in the acomodation block. We decided that we'd need to create a group for volunteers who could use this node in the acomodation block. All people in the block have net connectivity and where rather happy!


			== 23 August, 2006 Wednesday ==

			Got car with ... large car. Bounced from a B class to a C class. Must try fathom how David got this right! Needless to say we got a boot.
			Bought 2 P3 computers for deplyment, given up on P2 as they simply can't run Linux. We were delayed as they hadn't quite arrived in time.
			Arrived at the clinic at around 16:00. Lots of visitors again (Dutch, Brits, Auzies). Did some looking around. David realised that even though we had a large boot he would leave the all too valuable server behind. But Chris came to our rescue. Not much that we were able to do that evening. Installed Agnus' computer instead.
			Quick analysis showed that US Aid was down so the network did not exist.

Kmatthee: /* July 21, 2006 Firewall and Wikipedia installed */

2006-08-17T23:10:30Z

July 21, 2006 Firewall and Wikipedia installed

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:10, 18 August 2006
Line 207:		Line 207:

	I set up the firewall and the server in the corner of the room – fortunately it doesn't take up too much space and the installation goes of quite smoothly. Then I notice that the firewall interface does not communicate with the server PC – but the link to the switch and the wireless router are active. I also can't make contact with the wireless router on the roof. With that I call it a day realising that I will have to carry on on Saturday.		I set up the firewall and the server in the corner of the room – fortunately it doesn't take up too much space and the installation goes of quite smoothly. Then I notice that the firewall interface does not communicate with the server PC – but the link to the switch and the wireless router are active. I also can't make contact with the wireless router on the roof. With that I call it a day realising that I will have to carry on on Saturday.


	== June 09, 2006 Mini macs in schools and Hospice connected again ==		== June 09, 2006 Mini macs in schools and Hospice connected again ==

Kmatthee: /* February 16, 2005, Meshing */

2006-08-17T23:07:12Z

February 16, 2005, Meshing

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:07, 18 August 2006
Line 445:		Line 445:
	In discussing uses for the network we had some new ideas:		In discussing uses for the network we had some new ideas:

	* Getting house ridden patients a computer to get them communicating and getting outside virtually.		* Getting house ridden patients a computer to get them communicating and getting
			outside virtually.
	* Having the same patient do data capturing to bolster his income		* Having the same patient do data capturing to bolster his income
	* We also talked about using SMS and cellphones for compliance. Setting alarms for medicine taking. SMS messages that require a reply to check compliance. Notifying support group buddies about people not replying to SMS notification so that they can check that they're OK.		* We also talked about using SMS and cellphones for compliance. Setting alarms for
			medicine taking. SMS messages that require a reply to check compliance. Notifying
			support group buddies about people not replying to SMS notification so that they
			can check that they're OK.

	Day 3: Kismet is working! Not all the information is that useful for what I need to do. Met the clinic staff today to try and explain what we're doing. Today I'm checking signal strength from the school, its seems however that USAid is offline.		Day 3: Kismet is working! Not all the information is that useful for what I need to do. Met the clinic staff today to try and explain what we're doing. Today I'm checking signal strength from the school, its seems however that USAid is offline.

Kmatthee: /* February 19, 2005, Lessons learned from week long meshing */

2006-08-17T23:06:09Z

February 19, 2005, Lessons learned from week long meshing

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:06, 18 August 2006
Line 356:		Line 356:
	Lessons learnt		Lessons learnt

	* Test test test: test devices in a known controlled environment. The box couldn't connect and we weren't sure exactly why.		* Test test test: test devices in a known controlled environment. The box
	* Use your own stuff: don't use other peoples stuff. We tried to use the alarm companies mast, it was rubbish and about to fall down. But it could also endanger our equipment when the alarm company removes there antennae.		couldn't connect and we weren't sure exactly why.
	* Equipment: cover for your laptop so you can see the screen. Backpack/fishing jacket also a head- mounted display wouldn't hurt (to monitor the wireless network). Rifle-mounted antennae with sight. Tri-pod for temporary mounting of equipment. Ladders are a problem you need a long extension ladder about 6m.		* Use your own stuff: don't use other peoples stuff. We tried to use the
	* Windows Sucks: we had major packet drop yet on Linux the network pings work perfectly. Either Windows has a simple and incompetant network layer or it puts so much rubbish on the network that it sucks up all bandwidth. Why do people use this rubbish!		alarm companies mast, it was rubbish and about to fall down. But it could
	* Testing protocol: It would be usefull to have a set standard of how you tackle problem. Many time you go down the wrong route. Simple idea: mount antennae with laptop and get signal strengths right. Then connect box browse to the box over the wire and check for links. Lastly connect to the box as a wireless client.		also endanger our equipment when the alarm company removes there antennae.
			* Equipment: cover for your laptop so you can see the screen. Backpack/fishing
			jacket also a head- mounted display wouldn't hurt (to monitor the wireless
			network). Rifle-mounted antennae with sight. Tri-pod for temporary mounting
			of equipment. Ladders are a problem you need a long extension ladder about 6m.
			* Windows Sucks: we had major packet drop yet on Linux the network pings work
			perfectly. Either Windows has a simple and incompetant network layer or it
			puts so much rubbish on the network that it sucks up all bandwidth. Why do
			people use this rubbish!
			* Testing protocol: It would be usefull to have a set standard of how you tackle
			problem. Many time you go down the wrong route. Simple idea: mount antennae
			with laptop and get signal strengths right. Then connect box browse to the
			box over the wire and check for links. Lastly connect to the box as a wireless
			client.

	Observations on the first stage		Observations on the first stage
Line 394:		Line 407:

	Other things to investigate are models for charging for network usage. Currently our strategy is to have farmers cross-subsidise the schools connectivity. A problem with this however is that other forms of connectivity are becoming relatively cheap (3G, etc) so this still needs to be reasonable.		Other things to investigate are models for charging for network usage. Currently our strategy is to have farmers cross-subsidise the schools connectivity. A problem with this however is that other forms of connectivity are becoming relatively cheap (3G, etc) so this still needs to be reasonable.



	== February 19, 2005, Too much sun for a geek ==		== February 19, 2005, Too much sun for a geek ==

Kmatthee: /* July 06, 2005, Realisation of a mesh vision */

2006-08-17T23:03:47Z

July 06, 2005, Realisation of a mesh vision

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:03, 18 August 2006
Line 320:		Line 320:
	* Upgraded AGNUS, HOSPICE and SIKILE to OpenWrt		* Upgraded AGNUS, HOSPICE and SIKILE to OpenWrt
	* The clinic is cabled to various buildings so we will be able to recover		* The clinic is cabled to various buildings so we will be able to recover
	one node and just run a cable from the FLATS node to the VSAT.		one node and just run a cable from the FLATS node to the VSAT.

	We had a 7ms delay between AGNUS and ACTS_VSAT which is a route that passes through all present nodes. VoIP is now truely achievable. Wonderful performance compared to WDS mode. Throw out WDS wherever you see it its just not worth the effort. It is honestly more simple to setup OLSR. Glad we've learnt that and can move on.		We had a 7ms delay between AGNUS and ACTS_VSAT which is a route that passes through all present nodes. VoIP is now truely achievable. Wonderful performance compared to WDS mode. Throw out WDS wherever you see it its just not worth the effort. It is honestly more simple to setup OLSR. Glad we've learnt that and can move on.