Archives January 2006

I’m still waiting to get hold of some wifi cards that actually work with LocustWorld, so at the moment I’m stuck with two old laptops with crappy pcmcia cards in them. It works, but I really need more nodes to mess about with.

For now I am working on getting LocustWorld installed onto a Linksys WRT54G. So far I’ve managed to get the routing system working (AODV), and now need to concentrate on getting the auto configuration working! To track all this, and to allow other people to help, I’ve set up a wiki on LancasterMesh website. If you want to help with this, feel free to create an account. I’m also going to set up a CVS repository or something for any code I create, but that’ll probably be much further down the line!

I know its very very geeky, but I’ve just started listening to LugRadio. This is a podcast radio show created by a group of LUG members from Wolverhampton. It is extremely funny, a bit blue in places, and talks about the latest happenings in the Linux and open source world in general. If you are into Linux or open source in any way, it is well worth a listen!

Darren.

I’m currently looking at the Locust World system which is a combined wireless mesh node and access point, all rolled into a single 32Mb package that can be run off a compact flash card. It uses standard PC components and the base system is totally free! Could be quite good for both Lancaster Mesh and CastleWireless.

Unfortunately, the documentation seems a little old, and apart from new news articles about the latest implementations, there doesn’t seem to be much activity. It doesn’t help either that I can’t seem to join the mailing list for some reason. Hopefully I’ll be able to get on the list and get some form of support, and possibly contribute back in to the project. It does have a commercial version of the software with all sorts of bonuses, but I think I’ll wait till I’ve got the basic package working before I fork out on that! 🙂

From my messing around with it so far tho’, I have discovered just how bad the native support in linux is for wifi cards, also how often card manufacturers decide to change what chipset they use on their cards! Having said that tho’, I’ve found one card on Dabs that seems to be quite well supported and is only a tenner! (Quicklinx code: 3X0MWS). So, if anyone out there has a wifi card (11Mb, or 54Mb) that they know has a prism or orinoco chipset and want to give it a good home, let me know!

Well, in my eternal geek quest, I’ve once again set up IPv6 on my network. This time however, I discovered BT Exact, which made the whole process so simple, its a wonder more people aren’t IPv6 enabled (at least in the UK). It took all of 10 minutes to install the required software (radvd), edit the script that BT exact automatically send to fit in with my network, and start the interface. They even allow you to set up your own IPv6 enabled DNS servers with reverse lookups.

Now just to wait and see if Eclipse offer any IPv6 functionality! Update: They don’t!

Darren.