Wireless Mesh Live CD Instructions
The cozybit Wireless Mesh Live CD is a modified Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD featuring o11s mesh networking included in the 2.6.26-rc6 kernel. Use the CD to try out mesh networking on your laptop or desktop PC!
- insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive and reboot your PC
- select "English" from the language menu
- select "try Ubuntu without making changes to your computer" and wait for the system to boot to the Gnome desktop.
Note: if you are having trouble booting, press F6 after step 2 above to edit the command line. Change the word splash to nosplash as the boot splashscreen causes problems on some PCs.
WLAN hardware
The Wireless Mesh CD works with WLAN interfaces supported by:
- the B43 driver
- the zd1211rw driver
Once you have booted, plug in your WLAN hardware (if applicable), open a terminal from the Applications->Accessories menu, and identify your hardware and its interfaces.
Bringing up a Mesh Point interface
For this example, we will assume that 'wmaster0' is the 'master' interface for your B43 or zd1211rw device. Start by killing Network Manager:
sudo killall NetworkManager
Bring down any other network interface derived from the same master interface.
sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
Create a mesh point interface named 'mesh0':
sudo iw dev wmaster0 interface add mesh0 type mp mesh_id <any string>
The new interface, 'mesh0', should now be available. The default channel is 1, use iwconfig to change it if needed. For example:
sudo iwconfig msh0 channel 6
Assign an IP address, for example:
sudo ifconfig mesh0 192.168.0.10
or use Zeroconf to assign a random Link Local address:
sudo zcip -i mesh0
Try out the mesh
Use additional Wireless Mesh Live CDs to boot up additional PCs and repeat the above steps (use unique IP addresses on the same subnet or 'zcip'). Now check that the PCs can ping each other over the mesh. For example:
ping -I mesh0 192.168.0.11
Mesh points with the same mesh_id and within the same subnet should be able to ping each other.
Now it's time to play a game: open Jump'n'Bump from the Applications->Games menu and start a 'server' on one of your PCs (configure it for up to 3 additional players given the number of people and PCs you have available). Open the game on the other PCs and join the server. Run man jumpnbump from a terminal to read about the game and its options.
