Tag: gsoc

Freifunk.net and Ninux.org accepted as Google Summer of Code Mentor Organizations

Posted on by Mario Behling

Freifunk.net and Ninux.org have been accepted as mentor organizations for the Google Summer of Code 2012. It is fantastic news that the growing international free networks community is now represented by two organizations in the study program.

If you are looking for more information on how to participate get in touch with your local wireless community or introduce your ideas on the wiki or Wlanware mailing list. People on the list will direct you to specific subprojects and contact points if needed.

Freifunk.net is an umbrella organization for wlan networks and community projects around the world and welcomes student applications for software tools to build and enhance free networks including:

* projects for routing protocols like OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. or other freely licensed protocols

* firmwares for routers and software for network devices

* software for network specific content creation like network CMS’

* any other network related software project

If you are a student there are important links to follow:

* Idea Page: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Ideas

* Student Check List: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Student_Check_List

* Mailing List http://freifunk.net/mailman/listinfo/wlanware

* Freifunk GSoC Page http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/show/google/gsoc2012/freifunk

* Google Open Source Programs: http://socghop.appspot.com

There is an info day on March 15 in Rome. You can also meet many contributors to the community at the battle of the mesh in Athens from March 26-April 1: http://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV5

Freifunk Google Summer of Code 2011

Posted on by Mario Behling
Freifunk has been is again a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code.
We are looking forward to more people joining
development. Please propose ideas for the program on our idea page.
Students wishing to apply, please check out the Student Check List
in the wiki and join us on irc://irc.fu-berlin.de/#freifun and freenode.net #freifunk.

Our mailing list is here: http://freifunk.net/mailman/listinfo/wlanware

You can also use the OpenWrt mailing list for discussing Freifunk specific plugins and tools with OpenWrt devevlopers: https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel

The application period starts on March 28, 2011. Please use the time to discuss your ideas beforehand already.

Timeline: http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2011/timeline

  • March 28:19:00 UTC, Student application period opens.
  • April 8: 19:00 UTC, Student application deadline.
  • April 25: 19:00 UTC, Accepted student proposals announced on the Google Summer of Code 2011 site.
  • May 23: 1. Students begin coding for their GSoC projects; 2. Google begins issuing initial student payments provided tax forms are on file and students are in good standing with their communities.
  • July 11: 19:00 UTC, Mentors and students can begin submitting mid-term evaluations.
  • July 15: 19:00 UTC, 1. Mid-term evaluations deadline; 2. Google begins issuing mid-term student payments provided passing student survey is on file.
  • August 15: Suggested ‘pencils down’ date. Take a week to scrub code, write tests, improve documentation, etc.
  • August 22: 19:00 UTC, Firm ‘pencils down’ date. Mentors, students and organization administrators can begin submitting final evaluations to Google.
  • August 26: 19:00 UTC, 1. Final evaluation deadline, 2. Google begins issuing student and mentoring organization payments provided forms and evaluations are on file.
  • August 29: Final results of GSoC 2011 announced

Links

* Idea Page: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Ideas

* Student Check List: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Student_Check_List

* Mailing List http://freifunk.net/mailman/listinfo/wlanware

* Freifunk GSoC Page http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/show/google/gsoc2011/freifunk

* Google Open Source Programs: http://socghop.appspot.com

Freifunk Google Summer of Code 2010 – Student Applications

Posted on by Mario Behling

Freifunk has been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code 2010.
We are looking forward to a great summer with more people joining
development. Please propose ideas for the program on our idea page.
Students wishing to apply, please check out the Student Check List
in the wiki and join us on irc://irc.fu-berlin.de/#freifunk.

Our mailing list is here: http://freifunk.net/mailman/listinfo/wlanware

You can also use the OpenWrt mailing list for discussing Freifunk specific plugins and tools with OpenWrt devevlopers: https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel

Every application is welcome. We are not only looking for
experienced students, but for anyone wishing to contribute to LXDE also
after the summer.

The application period starts on March 29, 2010. Please use the time to discuss your ideas beforehand already.

Timeline: http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/timeline

  • March 29th 2010: Application period for students begins.
  • April 9th 2010: Student application deadline. The earlier you
    start the more probable it is that you will be accepted! There is two
    way feedback during the application process which really helps you
    improve and clarify your application before this final deadline.
  • April 26th 2010: Accepted student proposals are announced.
  • May 24th 2010: Coding begins!
  • July 12-16th: Mid-term evaluation.
  • August 9th: Pencils down!

Links

* Idea Page: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Ideas

* Student Check List: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Student_Check_List

* Mailing List http://freifunk.net/mailman/listinfo/wlanware

* Freifunk GSoC Page http://socghop.appspot.com/org/show/google/gsoc2010/freifunk

* Google Open Source Programs: http://socghop.appspot.com

Freifunk Google Summer of Code 2010 applications

Posted on by Mario Behling

Freifunk is again applying as a project for the Google Summer of Code 2010.
For students it is a good way to get deeper involved into Free and Open
Source Software and freifunk specifically. During the summer students have
the chance to code on freifunk and get paid by Google.

Some other projects also offer freifunk related work. Check out the GSoC site after March 18 when the info on participating projects is released.

We are already gathering project ideas, as a way to
start for applicants here.
If you are interested to join freifunk at the summer of code and would like
to discuss project ideas, please join us on IRC at #freenode on irc://irc.freenode.org
and on the mailing list: http://freifunk.net/mailman/listinfo/wlanware

If you have already an idea about a project you would like to do, please also leave your idea here as well: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Ideas

Background info on Google Summer of Code

The most common question we get from students is “How do I prepare for Google Summer of Code?”
The simple answer is not to wait for the program to get involved in
open source. Start checking out projects now: take a look at
documentation, check out their source code and idle in some IRC
channels to see what interests you. The projects who have been past
participants in Google Summer of Code are a great place to start; use the categorized list of mentoring organizations (e.g. projects listed by programming languages) from 2009 to help you get started.

About Google Summer of Code

Google Summer of Code
(GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to
write code for various open source software projects. We have worked
with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups
to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Since
its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 3,400
students and more than more than 3,000 mentors & co-mentors from
nearly 100 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through Google Summer of Code,
accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from
the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world
software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in
areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating
projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers.
Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and
benefit of all.

* Frequently asked questions: http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/faqs

* Freifunk Project Ideas: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Ideas

Multicast for OLSR mesh networks: Obamp release by Saverio Proto

Posted on by Mario Behling

Saverio Proto (ZioPRoTo) has the released the olsr OBAMP plugin, that was a freifunk project for the Google Summer Of Code. The OBAMP plugin allows multicast traffic to be forwarded in a OLSR mesh network. OBAMP is an overlay protocol. It first makes a mesh network with overlay links (udp tunnels) between the OBAMP nodes, and then it creates a distribution spanning tree over these mesh links.

This version of the OBAMP protocol, implemented as an OLSR plugin, is a simplified one for Wireless Community Networks, where we assume the nodes to be in fixed positions on the roof of the houses. Protocol features regarding mobility have not been implemented (yet).

To explain how the plugin works consider the scenario in the following figure:

There are 7 routers, where only 5 have the OBAMP plugin working. Router 1 2 and 6 also have an attached HNA network with some hosts.

OBAMP nodes generate OLSR OBAMP_ALIVE messages, these OLSR messages are forwarded in the whole network (also by the nodes that do not understand OBAMP thanks to the OLSR design). Because of the flooding mechanism every OBAMP node has a complete list of all the other OBAMP nodes in the mesh network. Every OBAMP node listens on the UDP port 6226 for OBAMP signalling.

When a OBAMP nodes starts it has 5 timers to periodically start operations:

OBAMP_alive_timer: every obamp node sends alive messages to advertise its presence to the other obamp nodes in the network. In the alive message every nodes states its IP address, and if it has already a tree link or not (we will see later this information is important for the outer tree create procedure).
The OBAMP network must have a member called “Core”, that starts the TREE_CREATE procedure. The core is the node with the smallest IP address. When the list of known OBAMP nodes changes, the Core Election procedure is eventually called.

mesh_create_timer: every obamp node every OBAMP_MESH_CREATE_IVAL evaluates how far the other obamp nodes are and selects a subset of nodes to keep mesh links with. Note that to reduce signalling and to increase scalability, the overylay mesh links are setup only with a subset of the nearest OBAMP nodes. To select the overlay neighbor the OBAMP nodes first calculates the ETX distance of the nearest OBAMP nodes, and the creates overlay mesh links to every node that are far in the range (minETX,minETX+1)

tree_create_timer: the core of the network every OBAMP_TREE_CREATE_IVAL sends a message called TREE_CREATE on its mesh links. The creation of the spanning tree is very similar to the spanning tree protocol. When a TREE_CREATE message is received a OBAMP node enables a tree link with its parent and forwards the TREE_CREATE on the other mesh links. TREE_CREATE messages are generated only by the core and are numbered, so TREE_CREATE received over loops can be discarded.

outer_tree_create_timer: The mesh_create algorithm may create cluster of OBAMP nodes within the network that are disconnected between each other. This happens if there are groups OBAMP nodes that are far from each other. If this happens only the cluster where the Core is present will receive the TREE_CREATE and will receive traffic from the distribution tree. To overcome this problem if in a cluster there are not TREE_CREATE every OBAMP_TREE_CREATE_IVAL the node with the smallest IP in the cluster will make a long mesh link with the nearest node that has at least a tree link. All the necessary information to perform this procedure is diffused in the OBAMP_ALIVE messages.

purge_nodes_timer: checks expire time of various variables, and deletes nodes or tree links in a soft state fashion

The OBAMP nodes will capture the multicast udp traffic from the non-OLSR interfaces, and will forward this traffic encapsulated in the UDP tunnels of the distribution tree. The other OBAMP nodes will forward the traffic in the tree and will decapsulate it on their non-OLSR interfaces. To avoid duplicated packets the data is carried into OBAMP_DATA messages, that are identified by a sequence number, and the OBAMP source node where the traffic has been encapsulated.

In the figure black links represent real radio links, and red links represent overlay mesh links (udp tunnels). Router 1 2 3 and will create a OBAMP cluster, with two mesh links. Router 6 and 7 will create a mesh link between them. Because the mesh_create algorithm does not create a mesh link between the two clusters, the router 6 (supposing it has the smallest IP address in the mesh) will create an outer tree link with Router 3.

So please download the code and use it . If you find bugs please report them to Saverio and in the Sourceforge tracker here: 

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=681702&group_id=117612&func=browse

Thanks for this great result of the summer. Special thanks also to Nino from ninux.org who was the mentor for this projet.

Links

* http://zioproto.ninux.org/wordpress/2009/08/31/olsrd-obamp-plugin/
* http://gredler.at/hg/olsrd/rev/8e7887c1247f
* http://olsr.org
* http://blog.freifunk.net
* http://ninux.org

IPv6 and TLS capable network-superserver in Lua and C with HTTP and RPC Slave

Posted on by Mario Behling

The summer of code project of Steven Barth aka Cyrus is about planning and implementing an IPv6 and TLS capable
superserver in Lua as well as an HTTP/1.1-Server working on top of it
using the LuCI HTTP-Stack. This application will serve LuCI – the
Freifunk Firmware web user interface – and replace the currently used
slower CGI-solution without IPv6 and encryption support. Additionally
an RPC-Server will be built to allow remote administration of one or
more OpenWrt devices in a standardized way using JSON-RPC over TCP.

LuCId HttpD

The results of the summer work of Cyrus is pretty overwhelming. There is for example nixio, the new POSIX Lua library which will help us getting rid of the Lua 3rd
party library mess. And based on that there is also LuCId – which was described in the GSoC project. It brings us a new efficient HTTP-server. Some people may have
discovered that Cyrus already checked in things into trunk ocassionally. Also SSL support is working. Another nice new feature is native
support for creating wizards which will be used in the near future. The results of LuCId are already being tested in productive environments. They are performing well. Kernel mode
IO and TLS encryption function well. Special thanks for the achievements also go to John Crispin aka BLogic who is the mentor of Steve during the summer.

Links

Freifunk Google Summer of Code Project LXNM (Lightweight Network Manager) current results

Posted on by Mario Behling

Fred Chien from Taiwan has published some results on the LXDE blog about his current work for the LXNetworkManager and I am happy to present some screenshots here. Besides having Fred working on code related to wireless networks, the goal of teaming up with him in the Freifunk Google Summer of Code is to bring him closer in touch with the global free wireless community. For a long time we are looking for an easier to use and faster lightweight network manager, that supports freifunk community networks. Through his previous work Fred has shown that he shares those goals and that he is eager and able to get things done. Also we can be sure, that he will continue working on the code once the summer of code funding is finished. The rewritten LXNM already supports wireless connection settings and we are discussing at the moment different ways to define standards for wireless freifunk networks. So, I am looking forward to an exciting ongoing development. Thanks for a great job this summer, Fred!

Lightweight Network Manager

Detailed description of the current status provided by Fred: LXNM (Lightweight Network Manager) is working now after a long time for development. If you often check the news of SVN, you can notice that the next generation of LXNM has already supported wireless connection setting, also it has many feature as old version of LXNM. The new implementation and protocol defination seems to work well at least there is no bug of old version of LXDE had that no Access Point was scanned always.

As a network manager, wireless is the basic feature, but only the feature is not enough for new internet devices. To be a full function network connection utility, it must provide most popular methods of internet connection service something’s like 3G(HSPDA), PPPoE, dial…etc. And also we can expect WiMAX will be coming soon, so supporting WiMAX maybe important and necessary in the feature as well.

So far most network connections methods need to use PPP(Point-to-Point Protocol) to make connection, so we must try to focus on how’s PPP working and how to integrate PPP stuffs with our program. Fortunately, Most of operating system was using pppd to handle the ppp connections, it seems to be a standard we can consider. If we know how to get pppd immediate status, it will be easy to integrate PPP with our utility for us.

Regarding pppd implementation, it uses a tdb(samba database) to store current connection information(IP, interface, deivce, gateway, dns…etc) in system folder as root. Thus we need to read the file to get network status and the relationship between modem(eg, 3G modem, general modem) and network interface(eg, ppp0, ppp1…). Because of pppd is a user-space implementation as well as it doesn’t have library to provide serial APIs to let us be easy to operate its own stuffs, LXNM must direct open the tdb file. The problem is that pppd will update the tdb file anytime, it is possible that database be modified when LXNM is just reading the file. When it is happened, LXNM will get incorrect information or access failed to cause crazy crash. For solving this bug, we do some to check more information details which is from tdb. After some hard works, right now the issue was solved already.

Besides, the 3G support which is most important feature people concern. LXNM will try to use AT command to control 3G(HSDPA) modem to implement the connection handler, it can provide more information(ISP, Service Location, current area…etc) for your SIM Card with AT command. Some developers suggest us to research the implementation of Modem Manager Project for helping development.

Now we are working on this part which is that dialing with 3G modem, but there were also some weird problems we got. More details about those issues will be explained at blog next time.


List of Access Points on LXNM


Scanning for Access Points on LXNM

Links

* Source code: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=180858&package_id=268419
* LXDE: http://lxde.org
* Fred Chien: http://fred-zone.blogspot.com/search/label/LXDE

 

Status of Service Discovery for Freimap development

Posted on by Mario Behling

An update on one of our Google summer of code projects: Service Discovery for Freimap. Stefano Pilla from Ninux.org is working on the project. We have widened the project a bit. He is now also working on porting freimap to IDE like
Netbeans. This will make it easier in the future to implement new graphic map views.

Service Discovery works fine and at the moment Stefano is testing a prototype and working already on documentation. During the project he got in touch with the creator of JmDNS, Rick Blair. JmDNS is an implementation of mdns for Java. He also started an exchange with the creator of JXMapKit
(SwingLabs – Josh) that is the new kind of map for freimap that we want
to use with Openstreetmap.

screenshot of the "new freimap"

An important mentor for this project is Alx Morlang from Freifunk in Berlin. Thank you! And our friends from Ninux namely – Saverio, Claudio and all of the team. Service Discovery will be tested first in the freifunk ninux network in Rome during the upcoming weeks with mdns.

screenshot of the "new freimap"

Freifunk Summer of Code ten students accepted

Posted on by Mario Behling

Thank you to all applicants for the Freifunk Summer of Code project and congratulations to the accepted students! All together there were 49 applications for Freifunk. We could accept 10 students. They are currently updating their project proposals. I will present them here soon. We invite the students and anyone else to our Wireless Community Weekend at the end of May. More info coming out soon. Good luck for your summer of code projects For everyone who did not get in or people who did not apply, we welcome every contributor and user of the freifunk software tools and are looking forward to your involvement outside the Summer of Code.

Freifunk Summer of Code – Questions for your application

Posted on by Mario Behling

Eight Questions to answer for your application for the Freifunk Summer of Code. We are interested in your
answers to get an idea, how you would be able to contribute to
Freifunk. Dont worry too much about a correct English. We are more
interested in the content of what you have to say and how you could
join up with us, than about perfect Englich.

1. Please tell us your name and your country or origin or local background.

2. Please list contributions to the Freifunk/OpenWrt and related
projects or any other freely licensed Open Source project below.

3. Please tell us about your proposed project and the relevance to
Freifunk. You can also provide a link where you offer more details here.

4.  What is your expertise and ability to conduct the project you
propose? How do you plan to achieve the goals of the proposed project?

5. How would you describe your knowledge of development of Linux OS and OpenWrt related programming languages such as Lua?

6. How do you think you will participate in the Freifunk/OpenWrt development after the Google Summer of Code?

7. What would you like us to do to ensure that you stick with the project after the program concludes?

8. How do you plan to keep in touch with the Freifunk/OpenWrt community and your mentor during the summer of code?

Links

* http://socghop.appspot.com/org/show/google/gsoc2009/ffopenwrt

* Ideas http://wiki.freifunk.net/Ideas