[wsfii-discuss] guifi.net internet gateways before Re: med-mesh, a proposal to obtain funding from the EU

Fri Feb 3 10:21:11 UTC 2012

Changed the subject since this trhead focus only in guifi.net internet
gateways
2012/2/3 Alexander List <alex at list.priv.at>

> **
> On 02/03/2012 08:25 AM, vortex at free2air.net wrote:
>
>    3 ways of getting access:
> a-. Inside some mesh clouds direct gateway is obtained trough the routing
> protocol
>
>
> Could you explain what that means? Which routing protocol and what do you
> mean by 'mesh clouds'?
>
>
> I assume that e.g. OLSR is used as a routing protocol on the air and you
> announce 0.0.0.0 inside the mesh.
>
> The host announcing 0.0.0.0 then will route and/or NAT to the Internet.
>
> This is what's happening in Vienna and Graz (FunkFeuer).
>
Exactly, the default route is not propagated to adjacent zones (at the
beginning several issues, mostly by BGP, were related with this).
I refer to mesh clouds to some areas that uses "dinamic routing protocols"
like OLSR or bmx, although at least one BGP AS also has a default route.
All these areas are reacheable

>
> Preferably, community networks also get public IP space (PI) and BGP4
> uplinks to the Internet, to have a *real* network connected to the
> Internet, not a mesh hidden behind a NAT...
>
>
>
>  b-. Some VPN links to local ISP facilities or user-owned adsl
>
>
> Again, what does that mean? I would really like an overview of how that
> VPN architecture works, whether user owned or ISP facility based.
>
>
> That's the way Freifunk do it in Berlin as I understand: You don't have a
> single Internet gateway, but several users sponsoring (part of) their DSL
> connectivity... This works for TCP connections that are NATed as long as
> the default route doesn't change...
>
A real life exemple, a local ISP serves "full" internet connectivity to
clients, the ISP provides a PPTP server and all the clients configure their
PPP data to connect to that server, if everything is OK clients get a
default route inside their LAN

>
> In Graz, we're also using VPNs to connect "islands" where there is no
> direct radio link (yet) available. Experience shows that with the mesh
> network organically growing and bridging the former "islands", the VPN
> eventually becomes obsolete...
>
>
>
>  c-. Most users uses the proxy in their area, seetled by hand in their
> browsers, but a firefox plugin was created to makes this easier
>
>> Do you have to manually define which one to use on each client?
>>
>>
> Again how does a Firefox plugin assist in all this?
>
>
> I'm also curious about this.
>
> But honestly I don't think that a community network should have to rely on
> browser plugins for proper routing. That should be transparent to the
> users...
>
The plugin https://addons.mozilla.org/ca/firefox/addon/guifiproxy/ not
relates to routing, it's just an easy to change proxy settings.
Since most of the internet connectivity to guifi.net users relay on
proxy-servers we developed a what we call proxy-federation, one user can
use its zone proxy server but also all the others federated proxy not in
its zone, but reacheable inside the guifi.net network. So, in case a proxy
fails you can use adjacents zone one to still get access to the internet.
This plugin makes easier to do the settings change. It has a drop-down list
with a list of nearest proxies, changing proxy is as easy as chossing
another in this list

>
> Alex
>
> BTW: I might be totally wrong on some of the assumptions above. Anyway, I
> think that med-mesh is a *great* idea!
>
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>
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