[nmglug] meeting tonight;

[James Hemsing]

The FCC regulations are troubling, especially with how companies like
TP-Link are reacting, complete cooperation and compliance. At least,
however, they're being honest and telling us when and how they are changing
what they do, which you can bet other vendors won't do. There are several
OpenWRT capable router/APs made by TP-link worth buying before the April
deadline.

My router is a $50 3.5" SBC, old fashioned PC BIOS (no UEFI or intel
management engine) with a single core Atom processor on it, dual GigE, and
a Mini PCI-E Wifi N card. It even has a SATA port.

 It runs Debian 8.2 on a 4GB Compact Flash card with 1GB or so to spare. I
have no doubt a BSD would work, though not sure about wireless support
there.

I looked long and hard for am ARM based system with u-boot (objective: FOSS
all the way down), but one cannot be found with dual gig-E for less than
$200, much less one with Mini PCI-E slots and expandable RAM. (Any VCs out
there want to start a company making MIPS/ARM FOSS routers with dual gig-E
and mini PCI-E? I am a system board designer...)

The actual router work is done using Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW), hostapd,
and dhcp server from the repos. Debian 8.2 with systemd building a software
router easier than it was for me using Ubuntu 14.04 or Arch because it had
all the software I needed in the standard repos that are current.

The drawbacks are: it takes a bit to get the configuration the way you'd
like, and setting up packet forwarding with UFW is not obvious (the
alternative is an iptables script that is more work than a non-network guy
like me is willing to do). The biggest drawback is non-AC wireless. There
are Mini PCI-E cards out there, but it is not easy to find a Master mode
capable card that doesn't require a proprietary firmware blob.

The advantages: no proprietary firmware of any kind (boot or radio),
flexible configuration, full gigabit performance on LAN, and expandability.
If atheros does produce a fully kernel supported AC master-mode wifi card,
it is a drop in replacement. This board has a VGA port and even a RS-232
console port, so setting it up is like a regular PC, and there is no
network accessible configuration or access if you don't want it.

- James

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 10:33 AM threespace.xyz <admin at threespace.xyz>
wrote:

> Hi Ted (and the rest),
>
>    I find myself in a similar situation, sitting behind a pile of
> end-of-term grading to be finish before the weekend begins.  Rather than
> join my favorite group of geeks this evening, my time will be best spent
> getting all of that taken care of and off of my plate completely.
> Otherwise, my day is too much of a tight squeeze with all else going on.
>
>    I look forward to the meeting on the 31st, and hopefully will have a
> new toy to play with by then, that is if my Atheros AR5B95 AR9285 WiFi
> card comes in before that.  It's for the ThinkPad T400 that I am
> currently modding out.
>
>    Side note, how many of us NMGLUGers out there are running some sort
> of FLOSS on their wi-fi router?  I'm just curious, particularly about
> your opinion on the FCC policy from last year restricting the use of
> open source firmware on routers.  I've been looking at setting up a
> NetGear WNDR3800 with LibreCMC and have only recently become aware of
> the FCC restrictions, which I find rather interesting.
>
> Anyway, I'll see you all on the 31st, and I hope tonight is a smashing hit!
>
> -KR
>
> On 03/17/2016 07:42 AM, Ted Pomeroy wrote:
> > NMGLugers, I will miss the meeting tonight, don't want to stretch my
> > day today. However, I have marked March 28th as a day-long install
> > fest for the Coding Camp. I think I can be there and help Mark with
> > that part of the event he is running. I am working with a few others
> > on their Linux issues, even working on the mail merge to labels
> > function in LibreOffice.
> > No crucial issues for me at the moment - so I will wait till the next
> > meeting on the 31st. Have a good meeting and some fun. Thank you, Ted
> > P.
> > _______________________________________________
> > nmglug mailing list
> > nmglug at lists.nmglug.org
> > http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org
>
> --
> http://threespace.xyz
>
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>
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