"Wireless Mesh Networking"
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Latest News

  • Open-Mesh releases their mesh router
    Ideal for school/office campuses, hotels, apartments and towns: Just plug one of our tiny routers into a DSL or other internet connection and spread additional units around the locations where you want internet access. There is nothing you have to configure - just plug them in.
    23 January 2008
  • 802.11s Mesh & OLPC
    The Mesh Routing Protocol used in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC laptop) is based on the 802.11s standard being developed by the 802.11 Task Group, it is ashame we are not seeing more use of this standard.
    24 January 2008

Flashing the Fon2100a/b/c with open-mesh firmware

This device is not quiet as simple to modify as the meraki mini. There is no ssh daemon running by default and the RedBoot loader has no telnet/IP access, so the flasher process documented here does not work with out some hacking described here. I do not claim to have worked this out, i simply wanted to write a howto which would save other people some time. 

Note: I paid full price for my Fon router which i know for a fact covered the cost of the hardware to Fon, as such i feel i can do what i like with the device which i bought. The situation is slightly different for people who got their Fon router during a special promotion!

Sources of information for writing this guide:

Hacking the La Fonera - http://stefans.datenbruch.de/lafonera/#kolofonium
Reflash the RedBoot Config from SSH - http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Fon/Fonera
Creating RO.B.IN Routers - http://www.open-mesh.com/flash.php
DD-WRT Forum posting containing additional sources for the kernel and redboot config files

HowTo flash fonera 2100 with mesh firmware:

  • Do not let the Fonera 2100 unit gain internet access, otherwise you will need to reset the unit by holding in the reset button for 15 seconds.
  • Let the unit start up then connect via wireless SSID: MyPlace wpa key: serial number.
  • Change the LAN Internet Settings to static IP and use DNS server: 88_198_165_155 - Power cycle the unit and plug in the LAN cable. Give it 5 minutes to update the Radius config with the hack to launch dropbear ssh daemon.
  • Connect to the router via wireless SSID ( MyPlace )
  • ssh to root on the routers wireless IP ( default: 192.168.10.1 ) ssh username: root password: admin
  • You must now update the kernel to gain rw access to the "RedBoot config" MTD partition
root@OpenWrt:~# cd /tmp
root@OpenWrt:~# wget http://fonera.info/camicia/openwrt-ar531x-2.4-vmlinux-CAMICIA.lzma
or
root@OpenWrt:~# wget http://ipkg.k1k2.de/hack/openwrt-ar531x-2.4-vmlinux-CAMICIA.lzma
root@OpenWrt:~# mtd -e vmlinux.bin.l7 write openwrt-ar531x-2.4-vmlinux-CAMICIA.lzma vmlinux.bin.l7
root@OpenWrt:~# reboot
... allow time to reboot ...
root@OpenWrt:~# cd /tmp
root@OpenWrt:~# wget http://fonera.info/camicia/out.hex
root@OpenWrt:~# mtd -e "RedBoot config" write out.hex "RedBoot config"
root@OpenWrt:~# reboot
... allow time to reboot ...

 

DONE