comments inline ...


when last we saw our hero (Sunday, Jun 16, 2002), 
 SpencerUnderground was madly tapping out:
> I have a few thoughts and comments on the subject  of standards.
> More importantly tcwug standards.  How do we want to go about our
> name conventions?  How do we want to structure our IP's?  Do we want
> to attempt to have "seamless roaming"?  And if we do, do we want to
> have many tcwug essid's or maybe <local-essid>.tcwug.org?  Jima
> suggested we have <neighborhood>.tcwug.org for the WAN side IP's.
> =20

i think that's a nice way to handle the naming of the ssid and the gw
addresses.  i think that we might want to distribute our dns a bit and
we need to make provisions for folks that have dynamic addresses (from
cable providers, etc) it might not be a bad thing to either develop
tutorials for these users for either doing signed updates (ala bind 9) 
or wrap a client up that allows them to determine what their external
ip is and notify the server(s).

> Seamless roaming , to me, implies that one can go from one AP to the
> next without adjusting your settings.  If we have <hood>.tcwug.org
> essid's this not permit perfect seamless roaming.  If we had this
> naming scheme and coordinated all our IP's in the same subnet we
> could have "disected roaming".  This would enable one to keep an ssh
> session open between different AP's.

this isn't entirely accurate.  even if the ssid were to remain the
same there's the not so small matter of providing seamless routing and
handling the changing external addresses in the cases where nat is
used.   this will cause your ssh sessions to drop.

the only real solution for this is either mobile ip, or a really big
bridged network.  this would allow a single ip address to be used for
the session by the client and the appropriate handling of the session
via the home gateway using mobile ip.  the bridged example is pretty
easy to work out.

unfortunately, commercial mobile-ip implementations are still in their
infancy or are out of the reach of most users.  i don't know what the
status of mobile-ip is on the free unices right now.  i seem to recall
that there was an implementation of mobile ipv4 at CMU some time ago.
this seems like another layer of infrastructure complication right
now.

setting these issues aside for the moment - coordination of ssid's and
external gateway numbering seems like a really good idea.  i don't
think we're going to address the issue of seamless roaming in the near
term.  however, we can start putting some structure to the plans and
getting people hooked up together.

ok - comments weren't so much inline as the were just plunked in the
middle. ;-)



> I really like the idea of seamless roaming.  However, I also like
> the idea of breaking up the naming into neighborhoods.  I live in
> the Longfellow 'hood.  I have an AP with essid AAA.  So I could have
> an Access Point name (not essid) of AAA.Longfellow.tcwug.org.  ( I
> am mainly just typing/thinking out loud).
> 
> I am seeing alot of little dots on maps.tcwug.org in the Longfellow
> 'hood.  We should begin to "connect the dots".  I have been playing
> with these little D-Link 900AP's.  They are inexpensive and very
> functional.  They are based on the Atmel chipset so they are
> configurable with the Atmel utility.  Nate has the utilities on his
> site ( I don't feel right posting the url tho, Nate?)  There is also
> a Linux application for configuring the Atmel radios via snmp.
> http://ap-utils.polesye.net/  It is still fairly buggy, but it is
> cool.  It also has some handy mrtg functionality as well.  I tried
> to use the ap-Atmel utility and had minor success.  I well keep an
> eye on this project.  I am sure there are some more snmp utilities
> out there for Linux/OS X.  Anyone else have an good experience with
> *nix AP utils.
> 
> Well, I am eager to get some connectivity to other wuggers in the
> near future.  I should have an omni and I directional mounted on my
> house in the next couple of weeks.  Hopefully on my van as well :)
> Is anyone up for the challenge?





-- 
steve ulrich                       sulrich at botwerks.org
PGP: 8D0B 0EE9 E700 A6CF ABA7  AE5F 4FD4 07C9 133B FAFC
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