[Battlemesh] [FCC] What hardware still works?

[Adam Longwill]

This thread has been very informative.

But I want to get back to the original question that was asked: What works
right now?

What can be purchased right now that someone on here has purchased in the
past month that still works?

I ask because I have orders for mesh networking equipment to run on our
PittMesh network that I need to fulfill and I have now lost confidence in
my old standards-- TP-Link and Ubiquiti. I recently purchased a Picostation
and a Nanostation M5 that will not flash their 14.07 Barrier Breaker images
but will flash Nano Loco images (a workaround we have made work before) but
at an EXCRUCIATINGLY slow pace. After abotu 2 hours the tftp transfer times
out. If someone could shed light on the cause of this that would also be
welcome.

But what works now- right now?

Adam

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 9:41 AM, Juliusz Chroboczek <
jch at pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr> wrote:

> > I thought the chips themselves could be built to only cryptographically
> > accept approved firmware?
>
> Yes, they can and some chips are.  What we're expecting, however, is that
> the vendors of cheap routers won't bother -- their goal is merely to get
> FCC certification, so they'll implement the absolute minimum lockdown
> features that they believe will get them FCC certification.
>
> The other hope is that ARM boards are getting cheaper at a vertiginous
> pace, so with a little bit of luck (and a lot of hard work) the community
> should be able to produce a usable design based on an off-the-shelf board
> that is completely open and reasonably priced.  Right now, the main point
> of contention is the lack of either wifi or meiniPCI on most boards -- wifi
> chips need to be connected over USB, which sucks --, and the limitation to
> just one Ethernet port.
>
> If you're interested in learning what mechanisms can be used to lock down
> a fairly powerful SoC, have a read through chapter 32 of the Xilinx Zynq
> manual:
>
>
> http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/user_guides/ug585-Zynq-7000-TRM.pdf
>
> Section 32.2.4 describes the "eFuse", which confirms what David has been
> saying.
>
> Note that I'm not picking on Xilinx here (or ARM, for that matter) --
> quite the opposite, Xilinx provide comprehensive hardware documentation
> without registration, let alone an NDA.  Good luck finding similarly
> detailed information about MIPS-based Broadcom chips.
>
> (Except that Xilinx are still not documenting the bitstream format.  Grr.)
>
> -- Juliusz
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