[Freedombox-discuss] Which mesh system should be included in the Freedombox?

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Petter Reinholdtsen (2013-10-12 09:36:15)
> [Sandy Harris]
>> As I see it, security has to be the first consideration for any Box 
>> component, including a mesh system. Given the stated project goals we 
>> should not even consider anything unless we have good reason to 
>> consider it secure.
>
> Well, I believe that is putting the cart in front of the horse, given 
> the current amount of people involved.  I believe we first need to get 
> something useful that can be located in the privacy of the users homes 
> to get that legal protection, and then we can continue improving that 
> to make it more and more "secure", which is a word that mean different 
> things to different people and thus hard to have as a fuzzy goal.
>
> This mean to me that we pick solutions already in common use and 
> integrate it into the Freedombox, and depend on the rest of the free 
> software community to audit it (with our help, if someone in the 
> Freedombox want to spend time on it).

I perfectly agree with *both* of you above - except your very first 
sentence, Petter:

 a) First consideration should be security
 b) First features added should be useful and in common use

Since I am not experienced with using Debian for mesh networking, and 
apparently others on this list isn't either, I would look at _different_ 
features than mesh networking for now - while we try generate (or locate 
existing) experiences and common practices of using mesh networking in 
Debian more broadly, which we can _then_ include in FreedomBox.


> I've concluded I will focus on batman-adv for now, as it provide layer 
> 2 mesh networking (as in both IPv4 and IPv6 will work) and is used by 
> the Serval project that provide a peer-to-peer phone system that allow 
> phone calls and "SMS" messaging without central infrastucture.  If the 
> freedombox provide mesh nodes compatible with the Serval project, we 
> get free software phone support for free. :)

Great that you'll do more research into mesh networking.  Sounds like a 
sensible choice, from the facts you provide.

Looking forward to hear more from that research, so we can *then* 
consider if sensible to include in FreedomBox.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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