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Transcript of SFP#14: The world of mesh networking with Elektra Wagenrad

Back to the episode SFP#14

This is a transcript created with the Free Software tool Whisper. For more information and feedback reach out to podcast@fsfe.org

WEBVTT

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Welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast.

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This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe.

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We are a charity that empowers users to control technology.

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I'm Matthias Kurschner, the president of the Free Software Foundation Europe.

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And our guest today is Elektra, who works as a software and hardware developer and is

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involved in the development of match networking and the Freifung initiative.

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She's a philosopher, I think we can say, the author of the book Mesh, a co-author of the

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book Wireless Networking in the Developing World, and moderates the Freifung Radio and

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Radio Shows of Micro FM at Collaboration Radio on 88fear.de.

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So way more experienced than I have with radio and audio recording.

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Hello and welcome Elektra.

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Enough of the flattering.

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Thanks for inviting me.

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So Elektra, both of us are from Berlin and at the time lived in Berlin.

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And the first time we met was actually in Brazil at the Free Software Conference Fissile

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there.

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And yeah, so I am wondering actually how you got involved in Free Software before we

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met there.

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So that's already done.

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Over 10 years ago, but I realized we haven't talked about how you actually got involved

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in the first place.

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Well, my first computer was the Commodore 16 and that sucked because nobody was bothering

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to write software for it.

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Everybody wanted a C64 back then.

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Then I had a PC, a 386 without co-processor was using DOS 5.0 for Microsoft and I actually

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was only doing text editing and designing printed circuit boards.

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And later I bought my first pensum PC and that used Windows 95 and it was just a bummer.

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Nothing did work.

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And then yeah, since I'm an electronics person, I often shopped in electronic stores and

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they had redhead Linux and Susie Linux in a box.

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And at one point I bought Linux in a box and the first thing was the command line is so

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comfortable and I got an entire planet of opportunities.

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Like all the universities, all the machines, all the stuff you need to do something.

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It was all there and was all open waiting for me to play with it like a big planet official

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technique but in software.

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It's also interesting because like for myself, the first GNU Linux distribution I got, I bought

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myself or I got it landed from a friend and then I bought others and we landed around.

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Nowadays most people, they just download it and often confuse free software with creative

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software.

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And for us, we had to buy it from the beginning, this association isn't so present there.

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So for you, it was the getting this large tool set empowering you in what you want to

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do.

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We plan it with all the resources for free and it also rang the bell of Mutual Aid.

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You probably know the book Mutual Aid by the Russian anarchist Krapodkin.

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I have to admit, no, I don't know it.

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Well, this is like a huge gap.

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You should read Mutual Aid because it's an anti-social Darwinist book.

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And he's proving that for the flourishment of the species, it is important that the individuals

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from the species, they help each other.

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So survival is not the battle of the fittest and only the fittest one survives.

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The fittest species is also that one where the individuals help each other.

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So that's, yeah, that's in a nutshell.

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So when I think about how we first met, that was when you were, when people asked you

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to help with setting up machine networking also there in in Brazil, right?

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So we're in the favelias there and looking where could we build the antennas?

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How did you end up in this area of work?

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Well, I was always fascinated with wireless communication with radio.

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I think I was like eight or nine when I've built my first radio.

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It was a simple detector radio and probably a bit younger when I first built my first

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circuits and radio always has fascinated me.

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And there was also the reason why I got involved in electronics.

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At first I was more involved in electronics rather than in programming and computing,

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but computers of course, so the Department of Electronics.

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So it was also fascinating and, yeah, then the came the internet and a minute in the

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internet was like two cents back then and so you had to count the minutes and, yeah.

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And then the first DSL lines came and there was the opportunity to share those lines via

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radio and so I started to build some wireless technology.

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There was pre-WIFI, WIFI was already there, but it was an affordable.

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And so when WIFI became affordable and there was a budget for that community, I was involved

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in the low tech.

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It was like before the term hacker space, mecherspace was coined.

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There were these groups of like squatters basically in the Netherlands and in Germany that

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were setting up internet cafes and training centers for open stores, teaching people

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how to use GPG, how to install Linux or open BSD or free BSD or whatever.

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Well, that's now more than 20 years ago, 25, 26 years.

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And that was also the time when you Electra got involved with Batman.

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No, Batman was an invention I made together with Thomas Lopatik in 2005, 2006 because I was

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hacking on mesh routing protocols because routing and forwarding is a natural extension

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if you do radio communication because every radio communication device has a limited range.

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But if there are other devices that mutually help in the forwarding data, then you can

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build a cloud like a beehive where everybody is connected to everybody else, regardless

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of the individual range.

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So all the machines are contributing to build an infrastructure which is based on multi-point

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to multi-point networking, radio communication is always a broadcast.

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It's an artificial limitation if Wi-Fi networks provide hotspots where all the clients

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need the central hotspot in order to communicate with each other.

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And since the Wi-Fi protocols, since the beginning, at least in theory supported the

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ad hoc mode, which is basically multi-point to multi-point communication in 800.11, I got

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the idea that we need some kind of software that organizes the interconnection between

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those devices so that every device relates traffic for every other device if needed and

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this can be done over multiple hops.

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So you can cover an entire area with such a network and it would be license-free, it can

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operate in a license-free band.

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And so this idea was ripe even before I joined Fryfunk, but when I joined the Fryfunk

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community at the beginning, I wrote a Wikipedia article in the Fryfunk Wiki and explained

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the idea.

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And to my surprise, there was a crowd of people that were excited about the idea and that's

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how machine networking at Fryfunk essentially started here in Berlin.

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And can you explain again what bad man then exactly is with the machine networking now?

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That's the, you explain that, that it's enlarging the range of the network and all the peers

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help each other to reach the other peers.

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Well in the field of machine networking, so radio-based machine networking with multi-point

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to multi-point, capable radios, there are different types of protocols.

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Some are proactive and some are reactive.

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Reactive protocols, we can just skip there only trying to learn about the existence of

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the network and how they can get from A to B if there is a demand while proactive networking

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protocols, they always try to have an idea of the network so that if you want to send

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something from A to B, you already can scan the network to see who is there and then

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you decide I want to send something to B. And in the field of the proactive protocols,

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there were, yeah, there are the link state protocols and they try to calculate a graph involving

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all the vectors between all these individual nodes in the network.

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And calculating this graph is immensely costing in CPU and RAM and also in network traffic.

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And on top of that all, the optimized link state routing algorithm OLSR, it's one of these

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link state routing algorithms, it created routing loops, it didn't work as promised.

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So it was one of the protocols that we tried in Berlin and at least Berlin is still using

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it.

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I didn't manage to convince the Berlin community to make the switch from OLSR entirely

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to Batman back then, it was like 2006, the first Batman code was written.

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And so the idea is to have proactive protocol that is loop free and consumes less networking

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overhead in protocol messages, less CPU power and less RAM.

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And yeah, Batman algorithm has achieved that.

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So I mean, maybe it makes sense that you explained to some of the listeners who aren't familiar

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with RIFU from out of Germany what that is and that you accomplished in Berlin with that.

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It's a community network where people built their own infrastructure based on radio.

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Not all open community networks on the planet are only using radio, but at least here

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for Berlin and for Germany in general.

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It's based on Wi-Fi because here regulations and so on and such are so complicated, it's

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easier to set up wireless links than to dig up streets and areas and put your own fiber

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into the ground.

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There are other communities like the GIFI network in Catalonia, in Spain.

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They dig their own fibers.

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And there are other communities properly as well that do this.

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But yeah, we're building our own infrastructure.

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And it's basically also a technology to deliver services to the last mile.

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That's when you roll out internet connectivity or a network.

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Then yes, of course, you can have a fiber line from a major city to another major city.

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But then you have to distribute it to the households, for example, to the individual

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people wherever they live.

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And one way to do that is of course, with radio and mesh networking can help that.

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So what we're doing is not local area networking.

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We're doing like metropolitan area networking or yeah, in a certain district, people can

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use that technology.

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Yeah, and of course, there's much more to explain to that, which would be way out of

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the scope of your podcast.

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And I mean, for cities or like Berlin or also countries like Germany, the aspects you

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talked about before that you need more CPU, more RAM for the other protocol before that

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might not be such a big issue, right, because a lot of people they can afford to have that

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they have enough energy resources, often available to do that.

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I could imagine that this is completely different for the other work you did in some of the

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developing countries where it's very more difficult with the energy or yes, it's the

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filter I'm operating in, please, everybody don't get me wrong.

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If you can afford to put fiber to every household, please do so.

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But if you're in an area where money is limited, where energy resources are limited, where

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you want to have a basic service quickly, you can roll it out with wireless technology.

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It doesn't have, it's not always only mesh, it can be point-to-point backbone links and

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the backbone network.

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And the mesh is then that part that delivers it individually to the households, it's

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so solving the problem of the last mile.

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That's also why I got involved in South Africa with the Council for Scientific and Industrial

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Research.

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They had a program last mile, first inch, there was a development program where they were

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looking for delivering internet access to households in South Africa.

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And beside being a software developer for a very long time now, you're also developing

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open hardware there for accomplishing those projects.

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So I am there, there's one part that you create mesh networks with powered by solar power.

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Can you explain a little bit how hard that came to happen and what the challenges there

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were?

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I think you're referring to the mesh potato, maybe.

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While I was working in South Africa at the Meraka Institute in Chvane, I got in contact

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with Steve Song, who was working for the shuttle valve foundation, and he had the idea to

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the project village Telco, the idea of providing voiceover IP services over a solar powered

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mesh network, or in general for mesh networks.

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And since I'm an electronic person, I got involved in developing parts of the electronics

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of the device.

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But this is history now, this happened in 2008, and it's already an exhibition artifact

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here in the German Technical Museum in Berlin.

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What are the current challenges in this field to make sure that more people get a network

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connection in places where you can't have fiber that easily?

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Well power and suitable radios, but there's already a number of people that are involved

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in that field, I'm just one of them today.

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So I was kind of a pioneer in that field.

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There are not people doing stuff with lower radios, like a text communication in disaster

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areas and stuff like this.

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And yeah, one of my projects that I'm doing at the moment is a device.

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It's the Fryfunk Open Maximum Powerpoint tracker.

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There are several generations, one is based on an old 8-bit microcontroller, and now

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I'm using ESP32, which is like 32-bit and has Wi-Fi and lots of other gadgets built

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in.

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And it's essentially to design, to build independent wireless nodes operated with solar

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power, where you can monitor the solar system from afar.

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And if you have a Wi-Fi device, an extra device connected to it, you can monitor it as well,

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and you can turn it on and off, for example, if it has a software hanger and so on.

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So that's stuff that I'm doing at the moment.

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I mean, you already hinted at it a bit, but I mean, you're traveling many countries and

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you used to.

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You used to, at the moment not.

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Yes, when I was working in South Africa, I probably, yeah, I was one of these people that

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created an awful lot of pollution already.

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When we met at the Fisley, I wrote to the people, thanks, nice for inviting me, but I usually

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don't fry like 20,000 kilometers just for a weekend to give a talk.

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Are there other things for me that you want me to do so I can stay for at least a month?

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And so they had, and so I started to work in Chile and since I got in Chile.

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And later in Valparaiso, so I was already back then, I was aware that my traveling activity

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was contributing a huge amount of carbon dioxide to the planet and that we should try to avoid

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this.

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So I had a personal feeling that I'm also responsible for it, which you could criticize

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and say, hey, it's not you that is the problem, but yeah, I was aware of this and at the moment

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I'm no longer working in South Africa and I will only travel if it's really necessary

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for a really big, important project.

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So I reduced my number of flights by a great margin.

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And I mean, for me, it was the question I had there was mainly, I mean, the travel part

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is one part, which is a bit sometimes difficult and you have to spend a lot of time on that.

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But I mean, in general, I was thinking about your involvement and all the energy you put

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into all of this work in the last years where it's usually not done by some few hours

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a day where you are involved in that and you get some money for that and that's all

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of why you are doing this.

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So I mean, you are working on this for other reasons and that was the question I was getting

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at what, why are you working on all of that and putting so much energy and time of you

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into this?

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Well, my idea was like that democratizing communication, so giving communication to

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everyone and sharing knowledge according to the principle of mutual aid, coming back

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to the Kropotkin, works for the betterment of mankind.

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We are all standing on the shoulders of giants, the language that we use, the knowledge that

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we have, the maps that we use, all that has been created by other humans in the past.

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And we are all building on top of others.

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And there are people on this planet that are pretty much excluded from that.

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Because the resources are not there.

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So my idea was to improve the betterment of human society by democratizing communications.

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But on the other hand at the moment, I'm also a little bit depressed because with the ability

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for everyone to communicate, it was also increasing the level of where people start communicating

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hatred and disinformation and so on.

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So it's a two-bladed sword.

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But I hope that that edge that supports mankind will finally prevail.

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I think that's something for many developers when they see that there's also things done

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with what they created that they don't think that is something fitting into their worldview

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or how people should behave.

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That's very difficult.

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On the other hand, it's then when you are for open communication and you want people

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to work together and the question is like if you start limiting some of the things that

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can be done, what good things would you prevent in the world?

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Yeah.

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Well, this is like you're either promoting open communication, which I still do wholeheartedly

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or you don't.

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Which would bring us to other fields of censorship, control, surveillance, you know, once you have

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an open communication system where people share data and talk about themselves, they can

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also be the target of surveillance and so on.

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So this is an even another aspect.

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That is still sent by my optimism that it is for the benefit of mankind.

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And it's just something you can offer back then when I had the idea to Batman to get

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it with Thomas.

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I got so excited that it would be such a beautiful protocol and then it took me a couple

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of hours until I realized, oh, but if that mesh communication protocol is really so powerful

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and can do so, can organize communication so well sooner or later the military will

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also look for a protocol and that's what happened.

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And back then when we started the website open mesh org and open mesh net, we registered

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both URLs and I'm still keeping it.

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We came up with a license where we took the GPL and we added some comment that the protocol

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is only legal to be used in non-military and non-surveillance activities.

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We actually asked the free software foundation and we got to reply, don't do it, don't

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add more licenses and yeah, well, in the end, the military guys that we saw in our IP

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logs, one of them approached us and said, I'm sitting on the board and I try to convince

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my fellow people that they use your protocol because it's cool.

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But with that name, bad man, nobody's taking it serious.

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Can you please change the name of your project?

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So he never got a reply to that email.

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And there's also people that complained that we did that step and removed that part in

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the license, non-military and non-surveillance.

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So that's now removed.

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We removed it back then after getting feedback and some people are complaining that we did

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it.

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It's not a free software license anymore from the definition, but yes, it's very hard.

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I think that your approach then, that's something which I hear from a lot of developers that

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they choose a free software license because they want to make sure that all the positive

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things can develop out of it and that we don't go into a direction where then people are

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adding other restrictions and then you, after some time, you disable people to actually

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work together.

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But on the other hand, it doesn't mean that you have to fully support things that you

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don't approve and you don't have to reply people.

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You don't have to give them support.

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You don't have to do special development for them just because they offer money and all

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of that.

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Well, the conclusions that we have drawn back then was we are not going to patent the algorithms.

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So when they see what we're doing, they can study what we're doing and they can just

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re-implement it.

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And since it's military and they can just keep it secret, you can just copy our code.

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And I guess a legal fight would be pointless.

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Yeah.

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One topic I wanted to quickly go into as well, now some shift from, I'm sorry, but actually

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maybe it's not too far because it's also about, yeah, others controlling you.

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So at the FSFE, we work on initiative.

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It's a route of freedom where we want to achieve it that the ISP, the Internet Service

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provider cannot tell you what route or you have to use in your at home, but that you

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can decide yourself.

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So from your perspective, is this a huge problem in Europe that the ISPs can just decide

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there or for mesh networking or is it something where you think that this doesn't have a huge

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impact on the, on possibility of, of more community networks?

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Well, when you talk about the router lockdown, what immediately comes to my memory is that

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I signed a letter to get rid of Tim Berners-Lee and other people against the idea of the Federal

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Communications Commission trying to ban open WOT and open source.

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Can you quickly say what, what open WRT is?

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Well, back then, links is they had a router that WRT 54G and some folks discovered, hey,

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this is using GPL software.

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So for Fox sake, you have to publish your sources.

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And so they had to comply and they actually did at one point.

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So people starting hacking these devices and they were immensely useful because they

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were like 8002.11 G hardware with two antennas, quite, actually quite good hardware.

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And so it was, it was possible to liberate the hardware.

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And for like 60 euros, at the beginning, maybe 80 euros, it was a lot of bang for the

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buck back then these days.

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It's like a wireless router, like 10 to 15 euros, the cheapest ones.

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So that enabled us to build fry-funk networks at a much higher pace and much higher penetration

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and made it much, much more easier.

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Some clever guys from the open source community came up with patches and so on.

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So it was a big success and thanks to the GPL-ing and publishing the sources, a project was

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created and since it was a project about hacking that wireless router from links and it was

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to WRT 54G, the project had to got the name open WRT.

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But of course, these days, that's the history and it's now for all kinds of wireless

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devices and it's a very great Linux distribution.

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It's a meta-distribution that you learn to use in order to support your wireless device

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and not only wireless devices, there's also going into the Raspberry Pi and so on.

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But clearly the focus is on wireless routing technology.

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That's what they refer to today.

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So today, don't think of the links anymore, think of wireless routing technology, open

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Linux distribution.

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And you were at explaining that you wrote a letter or signed a letter with Tim Berns-Lee

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together?

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And others against the Federal Communication Commission of the United States because they

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initiated an attempt to ban open WRT altogether from devices in the United States.

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And unfortunately, the European Commission is following that.

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So they're coming up with regulations, they say a virus radius can do damage, think

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they can do harm and so software freedom has to be abandoned because yeah, so and of

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course, why I mentioned this in this context is the argument is that banning open

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source would make networking infrastructure more unsafe.

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And this is of course a problem that you also mentioned on your website.

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One provider has like one million devices rolled out and there is no updates from the company.

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The company lost interest in updating the hardware.

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So you have to use an unsafe hardware that now in times of war with people, even from

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state actors, start attacking networks, this is a clear no go.

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On the other hand, if you are ISP and you have the same device everywhere, it's easier

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to roll out updates and so on and so forth.

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But users should not be forced to obey to a hardware lockdown.

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For most people, they are not too involved, there are not many people on this planet that

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start to configure their own device, they just sign up a contract and they just use whatever

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they get.

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And if it's not working, they call the hotline and the hotline tells them to restart the

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device and then everything is going to be fine.

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That's also one of the aims there for us in the area of device neutrality that some

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people might decide that they just use what they get provided.

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But on the other hand, that individuals, organizations, sometimes even larger organizations

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or even countries that they are able to choose other devices and still be able to communicate

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and still be able to act with those devices and accomplish their goals with that and

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had something with the route of freedom and the other part you mentioned with the radio

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equipment directive on the European level where we are also working on where there are

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sometimes really strange arguments why it should be prevented to use other software

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on radio capable hardware.

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It's completely overarching, the FCC was completely overarching and Europe just follows

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blindly and the problem is it's technology from technology devices, it's even not feasible

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what they're planning and it will make the planet more insecure and it's ludicrous because

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the Raspberry Pi for example is completely FCC approved but you can just use the GPI

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open from the device and you can broadcast whatever you like because modern day technology,

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modern day microcontrollers, CPUs, they are so flexible you can modulate whatever you like

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at what frequency you like and so this is like tell the sun to stop shining because it's

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too hot, it's ridiculous, it's ludicrous and that's also a lesson that I think some

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bureaucrats in the United States and in Europe have to learn and they hopefully learned

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it soon.

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It's a long way and I think about all the meetings we participated in and the arguments

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you hear there, it's something which really requires long, long time to explain it again

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and again and then some things happen and then under arguments that you brought before

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are then better understood and yeah but it's yeah a lot of work to get those arguments through.

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Well but their idea of control, where does it end, you kind of just stop there then you have to

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to ban on the electronic components that you buy, yeah you have to limit compilers,

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where does it end, where does it end, this is like it's utterly ridiculous and yeah let's hope

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that there is still a rest of sense in your brains.

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That's why it's so important that people like you that many other people who who joined us

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in those discussions there that they continue to talk with decision makers about that or support

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others in doing so so that we get those points across against the sometimes very big large

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lobby from other companies there but yeah I still, so I'm exploding the amount of time that you

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want to dedicate to the product so we have to come a little bit to the end but so one one question

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I wanted to ask you is with all that work in all that different countries and for such a long time

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what was the funniest most memorable exceptional thing that you think about when you think about

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like free software? Well the most memorable moment was when I reached the lowest south of South Africa

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in the area of Cape Town and I went to a very poor area and there were the blue linksys boxes

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running a fryphone firmware from Berlin and so that's when I really had to realize

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what we had done, what we had achieved that people living in a township

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had entered access thanks to software and ideas that were

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initiated somewhere here in the western world and I had the idea I would like I would love to

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just travel around and see this type of installations and maybe do a film about it

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that would have been cool but of course it would involve a huge amount of traveling

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but it clearly was like a very inspiring moment. I can imagine

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then I have to come to the last question and that's always when I talk to people the same one

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so on on the 14th of February we always celebrate the ala free software day where we ask people to

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thank other contributors, other groups, organizations out there for their work and I don't think

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we have to limit that to one day so I'm always asking my guests are there any developers,

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contributors, organizations out there whom you would like to thank for their work for free software?

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Oh dear there is too many to mention actually I can only talk about people that I was working

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with personally but already to people whose names I cannot remember because there are too many

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that provided me with that Linux experience with that Linux kernel and all the stuff that I

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that I had access to when I started using redhead linux and later slackware

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but in particularly I would like to thank some folks that I have been working with like

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Thomas Lopartic who was coding with me Oles R and Batman. He was actually the major coder

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and Sven Ola took it from the from the Berlin-Fryphone community for his hacks on the WRT 54G

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and especially in the Broadcom driver Axel Neumann who supported me in Batman hand

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later forked to his own Batman project Simon Wunderlich. Sven Eichelmann you know there's

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there's many many names to to mention and I guess they're all all driven by by by this idea

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to share and contribute because actually this is what we humans in a positive sense are

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we all share and contribute and we create something that are a stand on and we're already

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standing on the shoulders of giants like Albert Einstein has put it once.

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Electra thank you very much for talking with me about all those interesting topics.

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It's a pleasure. Thank you very much for all the work you did. Yes thank you.

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So this was the software freedom podcast. If you like the episode please

38:39.500 --> 38:44.860
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38:45.740 --> 38:50.780
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