January 14, 2006: RussellSenior and I traveled to the Naya Building today to install a second server: "chevy". The addition of chevy will take some stress off naya, which was doing everything until now. We also took some time to organize and label the cables around the server "shelf". With the addition of zipties, staples, and a few custom-cut cat-5e cables, we conquered the madness. Finally, we took a trip over to metrix-west to test download speed at the far end of the network with the new load-balancing installed. The result: load balancing is awesome.--CalebPhillips

January 11, 2006: RussellSenior, CalebPhillips, TroyJaqua, BenjaminJencks and DavidJencks convened a WeeklyMeeting at NodeFreshPot at approximately 6:45 pm. At approximately closing time, we configured a serial console on the FreshPot nucab and shutdown. We opened the box, installed the ISA NIC, a 3Com 3c509B, and rebooted. The nucab came back up without the new interface. Modprobing 3c509 installed the kernel module driver and we had an eth2 interface. However, we wanted to use the ISA card to connect to the DSL circuit (it is a slower card), so we inserted 3c509 into /etc/modules and rebooted. From the serial console (ttyS0,19200,N81) we could see that the ISA card came up at eth0, so we rearranged the cat5 so that eth0 remained the DSL; eth1 remained the local FreshPot AP; and eth2 attached to the edimax. We added a corresponding stanza to /etc/network/interfaces for eth2 and gave it an IP of 10.11.104.20 (when we decommission metrix-naya-sw, we'll give the FreshPot eth2 10.11.104.2 instead, in order to keep the gateways together in the IP space).

After packing up at FreshPot, we headed over to NAYA to see if we could get load balancing working.

TroyJaqua worked on configuring a Linksys WRT54GS and an edimax in WDS repeater mode, and did so successfully. This may be a solution for our businesses looking for a booster at their locations. The downside to this is it requires a static wds link to be configured on the upstream radios. The upside is that it works. Troy added a WDS link to metrix-naya-nw's b/g radio to connect to his Linksys, then connected an edimax to the Linksys and then several people (Troy, Ben and David) associated their laptops to the edimax and got dhcp resolution and connected to the rest of the world.

Made some progress on load-balancing, and adjourned around 9pm. Ben is continuing to work on the load-balancing remotely.

January 10, 2006: TylerBooth, MichaelWeinberg, RussellSenior, BenjaminJencks and CalebPhillips worked at NodeFreshPot to install a wireless link to the Mississippi Network in order to facilitate load balancing. We found a suitable location for the edimax device, on top of the shelves behind the counter, and found a way to run ethernet from there to the nucab in the backroom, and power to the nearest practical outlet. We had a little difficulty getting a high quality crimp on the ethernet cable. This was attributed to the outdoor-rated cat5 being perhaps a bit thicker that typical, and perhaps not completely compatible with the tips available. We were making good progress when we discovered that the FreshPot nucab had only two PCI slots and thus would not accomodate another PCI NIC. Russell went home to find one, but failed. Packed up and went home.

January 7, 2006: RussellSenior, BenjaminJencks and DavidJencks spent some time today on Mississippi. First, NoCat was enabled on web ports (80 and 443). We tested from NodeFreshPot and it seems to function properly. It took a little hacking because of current DNS inadequacies (e.g. nodemisssissippi doesn't resolve). We spoke briefly with the NodeFreshPot counter people about the wireless there, and they referred us to the manager. Need to pursue that through Tyler, most likely.

We visited the BlackRoseCollective, just north of NAYA across the small community park and spoke to BHT. We told him what we had in mind, and he was okay with it. We plugged in an edimax to test the signal to naya-nw. They have no nucab there, so using the edimax there will be more challenging. His only expressed concern is that they have a house full of people and didn't want missnet traffic to impinge too much on their bandwidth.

We visited Commons and tried to connect to the cisco-commons from inside (it was pouring rain outside), but were unsuccessful. We could connect to metrix-commons. Given that no one appeared to be connecting, we decided to decommission it for the time being, possibly to live again on NAYA. Russell and Ben climbed up on the roof and removed the cisco and its sector antenna. We clipped off the ethernet and wrapped the end in tacky tape. Check with Russell for the old tip and we can be sure that we crimp the new tip appropriately.

Ben investigated the edimax and determined that it won't do routing in its normal client mode. We figured a way to use it in bridging at NodeFreshPot, where we can install another NIC in the nucab there, run ethernet to the edimax in the front of the store, and do the appropriate routing on the nucabs. It appeared that we couldn't get DHCP resolution through the edimax client-bridge, but that won't be an issue with FreshPot, as we can assign a static IP. Need to coordinate with StephouseNetworks on NodeFreshPot wiring.

We stopped in to check with the Dog Shop, and the woman at the counter reported they'd seen the splash screen. I told her we'd just enabled it and that they'd only see it once a day (if they stay connected). We don't have any cacti data on that edimax, so we don't know how heavily it is being used.

Earlier in the day, I'd worked with CalebPhillips on checking out whether the edimax repeater mode will work on the Mississippi Network. We had some partial success, but had trouble with DHCP. We have not thus far succeeded in getting DHCP resolution through the repeater. --RussellSenior

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 seamlessly 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.

See ["MississippiNetworkNewsArchive"] for archived news items.