Bergisch Gladbach still alive?

Community Rheinisch Bergischer Kreis
1

Hi everyone,

I noticed that a Freifunk router in the neighborhood that I set up a few years ago was back online. So I brought 3 of my routers (partially) online again. Freifunk here in GL somehow died out at some point, and I suspected the infrastructure behind it had been shut down.

Well, I’ll keep one router online for now, the second one has also recovered and done its auto-update. With the third one (with firmware from 2017 and auto-update enabled), I’m unsure how to proceed.

https://karte.neanderfunk.de/#!v:m;n:a42bb0ca782e

The uplink / OK:

Hardware TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v3
Primary MAC a4:2b:b0:ca:78:2e
Node ID a42bb0ca782e
Firmware 25122513sta / gluon-v2023.2.5-10-gb7f250d+

The second / also OK:

Hardware TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v4
Primary MAC 98:de:d0:c1:f3:ee
Node ID 98ded0c1f3ee
Firmware 25122513sta / gluon-v2023.2.5-10-gb7f250d+

But the third / not OK:

Hardware TP-Link TL-WR1043N/ND v4
Primary MAC 84:16:f9:5b:70:a6
Node ID 8416f95b70a6
Firmware 20170421 / gluon-v2016.2.5-1-g03fc7b8e

The two non-uplink routers are v4 of the TP-Link TL-WR1043N/ND. One is updating itself, the other isn’t.

The first one I brought online was the uplink / v3 — it felt right at home online. With the other v4 that I still have online, it also worked out after a very long time. With the last one — the v4 with the 2017 firmware — there were some issues.

Can someone here SSH into it and do some uci magic if I bring it online? Or: how do I get the thing started myself?

Apart from the technical topic: are there still people here from GL or the surrounding area who are following the Freifunk topic? I really pushed the topic here in the neighborhood starting in 2020 and even had some OVP routers in stock that I wanted to give away for free. With a pub further down the street, I even bridged a longer distance with a CPE 210, and that went pretty well initially. Then Freifunk here somehow just died out.

Best regards and thanks for your help and of course for new/old contacts…

Marc

2

Hello Marc,

Let me rephrase that.
Since you’re raising many points at once, unfortunately the answer goes in several directions too.
(I’m not in Bergisch Gladbach myself, but I’m part of the „Neanderfunk“ community where the initiative from BGL/RBK merged in about 2 years ago.)

Why your neighbor’s router suddenly came back online: That was probably us. On Sunday we redistributed the domains to the supernodes. The node in your neighborhood probably had a filter in the firewall/guest network or similar that was blocking its access to the previously responsible supernode. Since the redistribution, its domain is now connected to a different supernode — at least that’s the most plausible explanation because it matches the date and time of the reconfiguration on our end. In a sense, a happy coincidence brought you back online.

Regarding the 2017 node: The upgrade path from that firmware hasn’t existed for three or four years now. The auto-updater can’t handle it because we no longer have the intermediate firmware versions on the FW server — there are several missing intermediate steps.
The solution in such a case is a fresh setup with a current image from https://routersoftware.ffnef.de/
Important: Don’t carry over the old configuration. If you like, we can do it together. You’re also welcome to stop by our Neandergebastel. (open meeting, Jitsi, always Tuesday at 20:30 on https://meet.ffmuc.net/Neandergebastel)

Regarding „dying out“: In Bergisch Gladbach, there are about 30 nodes running, see https://rbk43gl.karte.neanderfunk.de/. I understand why it felt that way for you though: when nobody in your neighborhood is reachable anymore, the map doesn’t help much.

Regarding the routers at the storage: Thanks for the offer. To be honest, the „single-band, WiFi3“ models from back then aren’t really future-proof anymore. Newer Gluon versions are gradually dropping support for them. Not only do they — especially outdoors — no longer deliver throughput on the now completely overcrowded 2.4 GHz band, but the flash memory is tight for future firmware.
What’s currently recommended can be found here: Welchen Router kaufen? – Freifunk im Neanderland

And yes, there are people here, just not necessarily in GL. We’re carrying Freifunk in Bergisch Gladbach as Neanderfunk, originally the community from Mettmann. Supernodes, firmware, and map run through us, regardless of where we live. There’s „online“ now to coordinate things in initiatives :wink:

For „interaction“: Best way to reach us is by email at projekt@neanderfunk.de, also on Mastodon at @neanderfunk@nrw.social and in the Telegram group.