Monthly Update - December 2022

It’s the end of 2022, so this month I thought we’d just take a quick look back at the year via the medium of previous newsletters; and then add a few morsels of exciting AREDN news to help occupy you over the festive season.

What you missed

July

Where we start a newsletter

https://bamwiki.xojs.org/index.php/Monthly_Update_-_July_/_August_2022

August

Building out our backbone

https://bamwiki.xojs.org/index.php/Monthly_Update_-_August_/_September_2022

September

What’s happening down in the South Bay, and up in Marin

https://bamwiki.xojs.org/index.php/Monthly_Update_-_September_/_October_2022

October

Pacificon Edition

https://bamwiki.xojs.org/index.php/Monthly_Update_-_October_/_November_2022

November

BAM has lots maps, and everyone likes maps

https://bamwiki.xojs.org/index.php/Monthly_Update_-_November_/_December_2022

December

Looking back, looking forward, looking recursively

https://bamwiki.xojs.org/index.php/Monthly_Update_-_December_2022

AREDN News

Final Release of the year: 3.22.12.0

The AREDN team have had a busy year, and are finishing it off with one final sprint. To that end AREDN 3.22.12.0 has been released; the 4th release of the year!

This update includes a number of UI changes, including the ability to easily search for mesh nodes and services (finally, it’s easy to find all those cameras!). For a full list of improvements see the official announcement https://www.arednmesh.org/content/aredn-322120-release

Nightlies with AC radio support … careful now

But … that’s not quite all from AREDN in 2022. For the last couple of years the team has been working to add support for new hardware; specifically faster radios touting WiFi 5 (previously called WiFi AC). And with the release of the nightly build 2017 we are finally there! These new nightlies are based on the latest release of OpenWRT (the Linux distribution AREDN is built on). With this change comes a new kernel, updated utilities, and hundreds of bug and security fixes. Literally every piece of software AREDN is built on has been improved!

But ... and it’s a BIG BUT … with such a large update inevitably comes lots of potential issues. Every component of AREDN has been updated, so more than ever, please DO NOT install these nightlies on inaccessible radios or mission critical devices. While this software has been tested on >90% of the radios active on our networks, this testing can only do so much, and you should expect problems. You can track the current state of the software here http://downloads.arednmesh.org/snapshots/readme.md

The full announcement from the AREDN team is here https://www.arednmesh.org/content/release-notes-aredn-nightly-build-2017-and-later

Happy Holidays!

73,

Tim - KN6PLV - tim@sfwem.net