[Tech] Wifi at Mission Beacon+

[Grant Bowman]

Hello Chris and Luis,

I've cc'd the tech list to hopefully spur some discussion. Thank you
very much for bringing by the Refurbished Linksys WAP54G for use at
Mission Beacon. These units are a GREAT deal at $17 if you can still
find them available somewhere.

   http://homestore.cisco.com/en-us/outlet/accesspoint/linksys-WAP54G-RM_stcVVproductId82187547VVcatId543906VVviewprod.htm

I spent some time trying to put openwrt on it but because of it's low
flash memory hardware specs it was not easily. After a failed web
based upgrade and a tftp flashing procedure I got it working. I
followed your recommendation and put on the latest available micro
version of dd-wrt which seems to work great despite the GPL
misunderstandings of the past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD-WRT#Controversy

   http://dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/downloads/others/eko/BrainSlayer-V24-preSP2/2010/08-12-10-r14929/broadcom/dd-wrt.v24_micro_generic.bin

I am leaving Luis with the passwords. Unfortunately because WPA2
requires 8 characters we could not use the default I recall you
recommended so we just repeated your recommended password twice. It
works great.

FYI, these are the $12.99 wifi "G" adapters I've recommended they
purchase for the few staff machines that need them. If you have better
sources for such things let us know. As manufacturers keep changing
their model numbers and chip sets (effecting availability from
retailers) it is hard to standardize out deployments.

   http://www.amazon.com/Alfa-AWUS036EW-802-11b-Wireless-Long-Range/dp/B003V0I22O/

If in the future you will be deploying "N" dual band units any time I
recommend you add open-mesh to your evaluations. Their cloud
management solution is provided with no up front or annual cost.

   http://www.open-mesh.com/index.php/enterprise-mesh.html

I will be out of the country working with some youth in Nairobi, Kenya
Sept 6th - Dec 6th but will be available via email if I can help that
way. I will now be keeping my (no longer neglected) website updated
with links to my blogs and activities. http://www.grantbow.com  For
(no cost) open source support in the Mission District I highly
recommend to you and others that they participate in the Linux
Discussion Group at http://noisebridge.net Wed 6-8 near 18th &
Mission. Three other groups that also meet in the city are
http://sf-lug.org/index.html (website config is a little buggy) twice
a month in the Central Richmond district,
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CaliforniaTeam/Projects/UbuntuHours at least
monthly in SOMA and http://balug.org in Chinatown monthly. For 24x7
online support I recommend http://freenode.net IRC discussions in
channels like #ubuntu-us-ca which I usually idle in.

Cheers,

Grant Bowman
http://partimus.org