There are many remote regions on Earth, where it is almost impossible to conduct the Internet. What do residents do? Not everyone will allow themselves a satellite channel. For communication between members of a community, you can organize your own network without any commercial providers (community network). It is for such projects that the new free LibreRouter router is designed . Of course, this is quite a specific and specialized iron. But people live not only in megacities, but for the self-organization of groups remote from civilization, such a device can become indispensable.

Well, such networks, like “home lokalki” in the post-USSR, will be a cheap or free alternative to the Internet in poor areas of the third world countries.

In fact, before, such collective mesh networks were created, isolated or with access to the Internet. Usually commercial routers were used for this, on which OpenWRT and other software are installed , and if necessary, hardware modifications are made.
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There are firmwares like libreCMC that are suitable not only for commercial routers, but also for some single-board computers.


Free Software Wireless-N Mini VPN Router (TPE-R1100) : libreCMC free mini router on firmware for $ 58.28

The developers of LibreRouter say that their offspring has a number of key advantages over reworked commercial products:

• Availability Install and configure the router can not only cool boom. There is no need to strictly modify the commercial device.
• Price Free routers should be cheaper than proprietary ones.
• Reliability The devices are initially designed to work in the most severe weather conditions.
• Efficiency . Scaling networks without reducing speed.

What is a collective mesh network? This is approximately the following system:



It includes many personal routers that can communicate with each other. Often there is a supernod through which the network connects to the Internet.

Specifications

According to official documentation , the open design router is based on an Atheros AR9558 chip with three specialized radio broadcast chips: AR9558, AR9582, AR9582. The home router / hotspot antenna operates at 2.4 GHz (802.11b / g / n). Both external 2.5GHz 5G 802.11a / n antennas support MIMO technology (multiple-input multiple-output).

General specifications are shown in the screenshot of the documentation.



It is planned to add a TV White Space Frequency Converter (TVWS) and a separate transmitter for a low-power control line.

Soft

LibreRouter runs on LibreMesh software over OpenWRT . LibreMesh installed on all devices forms a two-layer mesh network architecture using the BATMAN-ADV and BMX6 routing protocols. Support for two protocols is needed to provide greater flexibility, because each of them has its own peculiarities regarding the operation of peer-to-peer networks or the connection of different clouds.

The task of LibreMesh is to simplify the configuration of the mesh network, including automatic IP address assignment and DNS configuration. Like the rest of the software on the router, LibreMesh is an open source program,

The network on LibreMesh is monitored and controlled by the LimeApp application. Another program, LibreNet6, creates VPN tunnels between individual subnets (clouds).


LibreRouter testing

So far LibreRouter exists in the form of a prototype, but it has proved itself well in tests . The developers say that according to surveys the demand is expected to be considerable: in the next two years about 2500 units can be sold.

Maybe the good old lokalki once revived in a new form, working on radio frequencies and bringing together residents of entire cities. In principle, they sometimes also grew to such an extent that it was somehow inconvenient to call them “lokalka”. The networks united neighboring houses and even entire areas of the city. People talked in chat rooms, met each other, and some even got married in the real world.

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