[Babel-users] About shncpd, the planned replacement for ahcpd

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

Dear all,

Over the last few months, I've been working on shncpd, an implementation
of the IETF Homenet protocol stack.  Shncpd is described on

  http://www.pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~jch/software/homenet/shncpd.html

Oh, before I forget -- I'm looking for a better name.

Shncpd implements HNCP (the Homenet Configuration Protocol), DHCPv4 and
IPv6 Router Advertisements.  In order to be useful, it needs to be
combined with a suitable routing protocol -- such as Babel.  Unlike AHCP,
which was a client-server protocol, HNCP is completely decentralised --
edge routers announce "delegated" prefixes into the network, and HNCP
nodes negotiate addresses between themselves.

Shncpd hasn't been tuned for mesh networks yet -- Henning and I are
working on it.  This might require some protocol extensions, we don't know
yet.  If you decide to try it out in your mesh, we're curious.

Quick HOWTO.  If you've got a mesh network running Babel, add the
following to the babeld.conf files of nodes running shncpd:

  redistribute proto 43 allow

Then, on each border router (Internet gateway), say

  shncpd -E 2001:db8:42::/48 -N 2001:db8:42::53 -M wlan0 -M wlan1

where -E is the prefix you wish to distribute in your mesh, and -N is the
address of your DNS server.  On ordinary mesh routers, just run

  shncpd -M wlan0 -M wlan1

and on client machines, say

  shncpd -s /usr/local/bin/shncpd-script.sh -M wlan0 -M wlan1

There's a sample shncpd-script.sh suitable for my laptop in the git
repository; you'll probably want to modify it.

Enjoy,

-- Juliusz