Flash the device

Download latest Réseau libre firmware for your device. The firmware is based on the Commotion wireless firmware, an open-source communication tool, developed by the Open Technology Institute in the United States, to create decentralized mesh networks:

• Bullet M2: First install or Upgrade from previous openwrt install
• Nanostation M2: First installation or upgrade
• Other devices

See hardware for more information about recommended devices.

Connect your device to your computer's ethernet port and reach the web interface. If your device is new, follow the instructions that came with your device. You may need to give your computer a static IP address such as 192.168.1.3. The default IP of the device is usually 192.168.1.1. For Ubiquiti devices, the default IP is 192.168.1.20.

Ubiquiti devices

The image of the firmware you should download is in "ar71xx" and is called openwrt-ar71xx-generic-ubnt--squashfs-factory.bin. The image suffixed by sysupgrade is to flash ubiquiti devices that already have openwrt installed.

Open your browser and browse to http://192.168.1.20. The following login screen will appear. Enter the username and password ubnt/ubnt

Go to the "system" tab. In the firmware update section, browse for the image you have previously downloaded, then click "Upload"

A warning will tell you this image is a third-party software and you are installing it at your own risk. Accept the risk and click "Update"

Wait until the flashing is over, it may take a few minutes.

Upgrade an existing openwrt

The image of the firmware you should download is in "ar71xx" and is called openwrt-ar71xx-generic-ubnt--squashfs-sysupgrade.bin.

Open your browser and browse to your router's ip address. if you don't remember, it should be in your node's page

After entering your username & password, go to the "System" tab, and "Backup / Flash firmware" sub-tab.

You can first click on the "Generate archive" button and it will download your current router's configuration. You may want to come back to it at some point.

In the second section titled "Flash new firmware image", browse to the firmware image you just downloaded. If you are just upgrading the image, you should leave checked the "Keep settings" checkbox.

If you are upgrading from a previous batman configuration, it is advised to NOT keep the settings and start from scratch. Too many things are changed and you may get yourself locked out of the device.

Click on the "Flash image..." button.

The next screen allows you to confirm the flashing. When the checksum matches, click "Proceed".

If you kept your old settings, skip to the last sections. Otherwise, continue for a fresh install.

Mesh Setup Wizard

Now you can connect to newly flashed device. You can connect to it through an ethernet port (like you probably did for flashing it) and it will give you dhcp

Open your browser window and go to http://thisnode and a wizard will guide you through the installation process. The following screenshots show how to setup a relay for Reseau Libre. For more information on setting up a Commotion router, see the Commotion documentation.

Click on the "Setup wizard" button.

?commotion welcome page.png

Next you will enter your node's information: the name and the password to access the web interface and the ssh console

?commotion page2.png

Then, you setup the information for the mesh interface: the mesh network name must be relais.reseaulibre.ca. For the mesh routing protocol, select "Babel" on channel 1.

?commotion page3.png

Next, you may setup information if you want the wireless interface to also be an access point. If the device only has 1 wireless interface, that interface will be shared between the mesh and the access point, so be aware of that. You should enter the access point's name in the name section and the channel.

?commotion page4.png

And that's it! Configuration is complete. You just need to click on the "Save and apply" button.

?commotion confirm.png

Congratulations! Your device is now part of Réseau Libre and it will exchange mesh packets with any other Reseau Libre relay around.

Note that as of last tests with the image (2015-05-31), the mesh interface has no IPv4 address so it does not install routes it receives in IPv4. So if you try to connect to anything through IPv4 addresses, it won't work. IPv6 works fine though.

Because of a default misconfiguration, you may not see other peers. If ping6 ff02::1%wlan0-1 gives no answer, or no DUPs, you may have to open up your firewall (input=ACCEPT, forward=ACCEPT) to see anything. Then, tighten your firewall until you have a secure setup.

Secure your device

Read the guide on Securing your device to know how to setup the firewall, protect the web gui and ssh console, etc.

Installation checklists

See install.