December 16, 2005: As of about 3:30pm, the southern branch of the Mississippi Network was converted to a WDS configuration, and simultaneously, the problematic metrix-west (N Missouri and Failing) began to function properly. RussellSenior visited the neighborhood and confirmed the ability to get DHCP resolution from metrix-west and was able to roam seemlessly to the nodes at Mississippi Commons and the NAYA building (Mississippi and Shaver). Will need to convert the northern branch as well now. Thanks for everyone's patience as we sorted through the problem. We are now poised to further grow the network with much less turmoil and delay.

At about 7:00pm, the northern branch of the Mississippi Network was also converted to the WDS configuration. This will allow better monitoring of performance (particularly seeing if people are connecting), and will allow us to transition Ed's roof from the metrix-naya-nw connection to the metrix-commons, assuming that is ultimately considered desirable.

December 12, 2005: RussellSenior has autogenerated /etc/network/interfaces for each of the metrixes for using a WDS configuration. On the test rig, he has been running a ping for the last 20 hours from one client to another (as described in the December 4 entry) and seem to have a consistent 3.4% ping loss rate. We are still seeing a kernel panic after ifdown/ifup'ing the interface (as described [http://madwifi.org/ticket/222 here]), but believe the problem is tolerable since the metrixes are rebooting themselves on panic. The goal is to get the WDS configurations installed this week, possibly on Thursday.

December 9, 2005: Last night, MichaelWeinberg, JenSedell, and RussellSenior distributed flyers at the Mississippi Art Walk. We may have located another willing roof host at the furniture shop on Mississippi down near Fremont. Russell continues to work on a metrix configuration that will work reliably. Current status is that WDS is working, bridging works, slightly lossy, panics on ifdown/ifup, but at least it is rebooting itself and coming back up in good shape. Maybe an interim solution is just always rebooting to ifup interfaces.

December 4, 2005: I have had partial success using WDS bridging on a test bed consisting of two metrixes and a router/AP using the madwifi-ng drivers and a multiple VAP configuration. I am able to ping from a client-11g -> WDS-11a -> WDS-11a -> WDS-11a -> client-11b, which is essentially what wasn't working before. Pings aren't without a few dropped packets, but relatively few (~3%). The most significant problem now is that I am having trouble getting the backhaul radios to consistently come up in 11a mode. Perhaps some timing issue. Also, I've seem some oopses, not always fatal. I should probably sync everyone up to the latest rev of madwifi-nw. Anyway, hopeful news! With luck, this will get ironed out in the next few days and we'll be able to deploy it.

December 2, 2005: Became aware in the late afternoon that the nucab's DHCP server was not running. The connection was fine, but clients weren't getting configured, which, uh, reduced utility. AaronBaer patched up the deficiencies and as of about 3:40pm the DHCP server appears to be runnning again. We are talking about ways to facilitate more expeditious outage reports. --RussellSenior

December 1, 2005: Buick replaced with a nucab box. TroyJaqua and RussellSenior fixed a small bug consisting of a missing /etc/network/nat.sh script and it started working. Network functioning again. Modified ebtables on metrix-naya-sw to reflect the new gateway (substituting its mac address for buick's eth1).

See ["MississippiNetworkNewsArchive"] for archived news items.