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Update: OpenWrt is kicking ass (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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I posted recently about wanting to install OpenWrt.

I just wanted to thank everybody who gave advice and encouragement. It was very quick and easy to setup.

I had some very small issues:

  • I had to reboot my internet modem to get internet working. Duh.
  • I initially didn't put my country code for wifi, even though the docs say this is important. My bad.
  • I initially set my wifi to WPA3, but I had to switch to WPA2 for my Roku. My bad for owning a Roku.

So far I've installed adblock and wireguard extensions, although I haven't enabled the wireguard yet.

What other extensions do people recommend?

Thanks again!

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[–] 24 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Reticulum! Runs nicely on open-wrt, and makes a better internet for everyone.

https://reticulum.community/

Especially good in this time of political strife where we see internet access being used as a political weapon by state actors.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    I've seen this mentioned elsewhere but have never been clear on what exactly it does.

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  • [–] 8 points 16 hours ago

    So basically, the internet runs on TCP/IP, which is provided by an ISP.

    Reticulum is a new protocal in the same spot - it puts packets out.

    However, while your TCP/IP address is usually tied to your location, and unencrypted, Reticulum is tied only to a cryptographic address. Which means that it can go anywhere, via any path - and is encrypted while it does so. Only you can unpack the packet and see what's in it, so your ISP can't spy on you, and it's hard to block access.

    And this also means it's easier to work on different physical media - so Reticulum can work over LoRA (low wattage) radios, that are similar to walkie talkies in power and don't require a license. If you've got these running, there's no way an ISP or phone company can stop people from talking to each other.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    You'll need to buy extra radio hardware for it, though, if I understood correctly? Enlighten me. If you'll say Reticulum also runs over public internet, it'll have to compete with the million free, distributed or federated things out there like XMPP or I2P.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    It does both - that's one of the key advantages it has over things like Meshtastic. It can run over LoRA, over TCP, and other forms, including l2P as well. The big reason to add it to your router, actually, is so it can help with traffic over TCP. If you really want to help, you can add a LoRA antenna via USB to your router, and now you can do LoRA <--> TCP.

    It's also encrypted by default at the packet level, unlike most of the solutions you've described.

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  • [–] 2 points 19 hours ago (1 child)

    I'm genuinely interested, but I'm a bit confused about the advantages.

    Last I read up on Reticulum, I got this impression:

    • it's not an IP routing network. You need specialized apps.
    • there's a chat system that has store-and-forward behavior - if you're not online at the very moment when you get a message, it'll get replayed to you later. Which works like email. Except only one of the commonly used chat networks uses this store-and-forward thing...
    • you can use different Reticulum network nodes to route traffic through, so if your personal one goes down, it'll seamlessly fail over to your friend's. However, it's not clear to me if the store-and-forward server thingy is now the single point of failure - does the storage get replicated among nodes?

    Can you recommend LORA hardware to get for Reticulum? There's a zillion different offerings on the market, with half of them out of stock, some dodgy-looking options from AliExpress, and everything's more expensive than commonly discussed in forums. I'm in Europe, if it helps choose a vendor.

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  • [–] 1 point 16 hours ago*

    Your app will need to be able to use Reticulum. There's a browser already designed for it, called NomadNet, which gives stripped down versiions of things.

    For the forward - yeah, basically people can setup mailboxes that will hold messages till the receiver is online. I've got one running on my home system, very easy.

    For hardware - depends what you're looking for. If it's just for your phone/laptop, there's some packaged stuff (you'll still need to flash though).

    If you want your router to work with LoRA, I used this without issue - it can come with a case. Heltec Wifi LoRa32 V3 433MHZ 863MHZ ESP32 S3 SX1262 OLED Display LoRa Kit for Arduino Meshtastic IoT LoRaWAN Development Board You'll just need to be familiar with a command line to flash - AI can be a big helper here. Basically flash it, put Reticulum on your router, connect the LoRA board via USB and write the interface on the router (via ssh), and you're up! You can make it public and see it on https://rmap.world/.

    Got mine on AliExpress, no issues. Also in Europe. One thing that does matter for location is frequency - for Europe it's the 868 MHz.

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