Day-1-Guide.md

Robonomics-2018 Day 1

Mesh Networks & IPFS PubSub

Resources

• Alexander Krupenkin blog post
• Robonomics Day-1 Follow-Up
• Robonomics 2018: network resources spreadsheet

Prerequisites

All job has been done on Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS

All scripts presuming working folder is ~/dev/aira/

Mesh Networks

Stack is: B.A.T.M.A.N + CJDNS + IPFS

• B.A.T.M.A.N builds virtual Ethernet network
• CJDNS builds routing over Ethernet network
• IPFS works on top of these two above

Purposes:

1. Setup a mesh network
2. Chat through IPFS PubSub
3. Download a film from IPFS

Step-by-Step Guide

1. (Re-)Plugin your WiFi dongle (if you use it, though you can just use your notebook's WiFi interface)
2. Turn OFF the WiFi manager and start B.A.T.M.A.N. Run the wifi.sh script:

   #!/bin/bash
   iwconfig wlx503eaa70c460 mode ad-hoc
   iwconfig wlx503eaa70c460 essid fftlt-ibss
   iwconfig wlx503eaa70c460 ap 62:C2:3A:86:A6:EE
   iwconfig wlx503eaa70c460 channel 3
   modprobe batman_adv
   batctl if add wlx503eaa70c460
   ifconfig wlx503eaa70c460 up
   

replace wlx503eaa70c460 to your inteface here

3. Check B.A.T.M.A.N connectivity

   $ sudo batctl n
   

4. (run once after the install) Configure CJDNS

   $ cd cjdns
   $ ./cjdroute --genconf >> cjdroute.conf
   

5. Turn CJDNS up

$ sudo ./cjdroute < cjdroute.conf

6. Sometimes you'll need to restart the CJDNS for troubleshooting. To do this, kill the process and start it again:

$ sudo pkill cjdroute
$ sudo ./cjdroute < cjdroute.conf

7. Check CJDNS connectivity

$ ./tools/peerStats

8. Start IPFS daemon if not started yet

ipfs daemon --enable-pubsub-experiment

9. You can check if IPFS daemon runing with

$ ipfs id
Error: api not running

It is not running if you get an Error

9. Connect to certain IPFS nodes of our network (and set it to do this each time on startup)

ipfs swarm connect "/ip6/fca2:d099:c448:8666:e3f1:f39e:aad0:ea07/tcp/4001/ipfs/QmZbznJh9bAGDptdiRYcrLN4cM8h9D2jwSCTgrKRj3KayE" ;
ipfs bootstrap add /ip6/fca2:d099:c448:8666:e3f1:f39e:aad0:ea07/tcp/4001/ipfs/QmZbznJh9bAGDptdiRYcrLN4cM8h9D2jwSCTgrKRj3KayE ;
ipfs bootstrap add /ip6/fc52:735:525b:7aa:3450:3b0b:e03f:6d1f/tcp/4001/ipfs/QmZB2JPt8bhkQbBnjpwzdgaqZMmJupx85R7r9f1e5stmKs

10. Check the nodes you are connected to

$ ipfs swarm peers

11. Subscribe to certain IPFS channel

ipfs pubsub sub --discover airalab-mesh

Publish a message to the channel

ipfs pubsub pub airalab-mesh "   F.CK THE GOVERNER\!    "

12. Share your file through the IPFS

$ ipfs add film.mkv
added QmWfHXfnQbxwqJoPnyRqSBndHR8EgWwyMAyF4FSaF1MEZx film.mkv

you can publish the hash to the IPFS pubsub, to let your mates to download the film 13. You can download the file from IPFS knowing its hash by

$ ipfs get QmWfHXfnQbxwqJoPnyRqSBndHR8EgWwyMAyF4FSaF1MEZx

Troubleshooting

Problem 1. Connection problems

Sometimes you could loose the connection to other nodes. This could be because of dongle channel sets back to wrong one. Or, more tricky case, the network just can loose connectivity between sub-networks.

To resolve these issues:

1. Check WiFi dongle channel

$ iwconfig

You should see something like Frequency=2.422 GHz on dongle's interface, which means it is on the channel 3. Of you see 2.412 GHz instead, this means you dropped back to channel 1. If so, go to 2.

2. Re-Plug the dongle and repeat the steps starting from the step 1.

3. To connect sub-network, take the ip of any node from other sub-network and use ipfs swarm connect <node> to resore connectivity

Problem 2. File downloading is tooooo sloooow

Well, the dongles we used were very slow. And moreover the more nodes the mesh networks has, the faster it works. Hence, try to

1. Use your notebook WiFi instead of the dongle
2. Encourage your mates to join the mesh network
3. Well, you can use the CJDNS on top of usual WiFi local network instead of mesh network

More Tools & Tricks

• yrd - CJDNS debugging tool

To set a WiFi connection from shell

Sometimes you probably would like to google something in the middle of the process. To not get crazy while switching your Wlan interface between mesh network and your internet provider router, you could use the WiFi dongle for the former and the notebook wlan interface for the latter. For that, use something like this

$ ip a
$ wpa_supplicant -i wlp3s0 -c wpa.conf
$ sudo rfkill list
$ sudo rfkill unblock all
$ sudo wpa_supplicant -i wlp3s0 -c wpa.conf