Abandoned blog

photo by Matsatsinis Fragiskos

Since I came back from my vacations and even before , I started to feel fewer and fewer involved on this blog.

An evident slow-down in Fon development and some personal troubles keep my mind away from this space .

So I apologise with my few international readers , but I’m about to take the decision to close down this space.

I will continue to post in the Italian section of this blog as personal gather of tech howtos and thoughts. I will move also this domain , if I can , to my tumble blog at the address fonblog.tumblr.com.

It has been a pleasure to write here and to keep in touch with guys with vision and knowledge as Steven , Eric , Anselmi , Jurgi , Kyros , Freechelmi , Jonakis , Nkieto , Christopher , Freddy , the guys from Francofon (even if we had some discussions in the past ) , Swimgod , Danberte , AustinTX , Mike Puchol and all the others that I might forget.

Thanks for your support. I won’t forget this time we spent together , talking about Fon and his development.

That’s all fellas , see you soon !

Hot fixes in Fonera+ firmware

Just released to selected users , the firmware 1.1.1-r2 for la Fonera+.

The hack team of the Lama Bleu is working to compile a changelog and to understand what new features or patches has been applied.

Stay tuned.

Meraki mAsh(up) for San Francisco wifi network

You already read about Meraki raising 20 mil us$ to extend citywide the wifi coverage of San Francisco. Where Google and Earthlink failed , now the Mountain View wifi start-up claim to succeed .

My opinion about this is that they can really achieve to do it , because they are meshing the wifi signal but also mashing-up the philosophy.

From the FAQ of free the net project :

How can I help build this network?

Free the Net is a community-built network. Meraki provides the technology, but we rely on people to help build and grow. There are a number of ways you can help:

• If you can see the Free the Net signal, sign up for a free repeater to boost your signal.
• Volunteer to host an outdoor repeater on your roof or balcony. The outdoor units help spread the signal throughout your neighbourhood and are critical to the growth of the network.
• Spread the word! Tell your friends and neighbours to sign up at http://sf.meraki.com.
• Check out the network map and keep yourself up-to-date on our progress.

Does it sound familiar ?

Meraki is combining the social part of FON involving people in the construction of network (installing repeaters rooftop or inside restaurants , shops , halls) with their owned technology , keeping the managing of the network in their hands. Technically, I guess that meraki will provide robust gateways with high bandwidth and people will maintain mesh nodes at their home , taking care of them.

This sounds perfect , but there are a couple of things that sounds dissonant :

Are we sure that people will agree to mount the repeater device on their balcony just for the glory of being part of construction of a citywide wifi network ?

What if the repeating node will fail to function , due to a simple software failure or high load kernel panic or other unpredictable causes ? It’s supposed that people who mounted the repeater cell are not technicians , and also if just a mere powercycle could be enough to put again the node on line , who will advise them ?

Let’s wait and see what will happen.

Debrick Fonera plus

Holidays , more time to spend at home , and some freaky geeky had the chance to put the hands on Fonera plus , to mod it , to reflash it , maybe with DD-WRT or Openwrt Kamikaze.

But sometimes something goes wrong and your tiny little white router becomes a tiny little white brick.

No worries , the amazing Blue Lama has the solution . Wait before to cry and to put fonera plus into the waste bin.

Just follow the easy instructions on how to debrick in Eric’s blog or in the wiki.

Trasteverewifi

My friend Stefano Vitta has moved to his birthplace Rome and he’s starting a new sparkling initiative.

Similar to Chueca , the Wifi neighbourhood in Madrid , he’s launching Trasteverewifi. Trastevere is the old popular Rome’s quarter, famous for his trattorie , bars , eating and drinking places and Portaportese marketplace .

In the charming of this special quarter in Italy’s capital , you will soon find a lot of FON hotspots in order to enjoy free wireless connectivity.

So , Viva free wifi also in Rome.

In this video , Stefano explains all the details of the initiative. (italian only)

iFon the wifi connector

Just landed today to App Tapp package repository , the iFon software. This utility once installed into your (unlocked) iPhone or iPod touch can connect you easily and automatically to every fon spot around.

Nice one !

Via Martin and troisgrammescinq  

Tweaking Qos on la Fonera plus

La Fonera plus has a decent qos on board. Changing it is possible through the user-zone , moving this slide to the bandwidth we want to share.

It’s possible to shrink it to minimum 512Kbs which can be acceptable for most dsl users.

But , if you live in a crowded area , with many foneros connected to your hot spot , and your dsl provider give you a monthly amount of traffic , this could be a problem.

Solution ? To open la fonera plus for a better custom qos.

The file you need to edit is /etc/config/qos . For your convenience , I zipped a sample file to download.

Open it and change this part :

# QoS configuration for OpenWrt
# INTERFACES:
config interface hotspot
option classgroup	"Default"
option enabled		0
option upload    	512
option download		512
option device		tun0

config interface wan
option classgroup  "Default"
option enabled      0
option overhead 	1
option upload       128
option download     1024

Open it with your favourite editor and assign the bandwidth amount desired. Remember , tun0 hotspot is the FON_AP zone , wan is the lan gateway to the internet.Upload the new qos file to la fonera plus .

This should be enough to shape as per your desire the bandwidth to share , but unfortunately , our freefonera hack seems to lack some init scripts.

To make things work you have to go to /etc/rc1.d and create a symlink to rcd script S50qos.

To do this type

ln -sf /etc/rc.d/S50qos S50qos

Reboot la fonera plus and you are now a proud member of Net Neutrality oppositor . You can shape , ban , slow any packet you want.

I gave to pubblic wlan 100 kbs , enough to surf the web and even to make a skype call. Watching video or listening to radio streaming could be a problem , but I think a fonero should be responsible and do not saturate other’s bandwidth.

Fonera plus hack. Finally we did it !

After hard beta testing period , howtos writing , translations , making scripts tweaking and mass email exchange between the team , finally the Fonera Plus hack has been released.

The easy and step by step howto is here !

I just want to thank all the team , who made possible the making of this project , first of all the great Lama Bleu , aka Eric Levine who spent 2 months to build the image for Fonera plus re flashing , without changing anything of original FON configuration .

My fellow Giorgio Zarrelli , who wrote the first version of the English how to , scripted the redboot access procedure and much much more.

A very very special thanks to incredible Steven Leeman of the Belgian FON community and official blogger for Dutch section of blog.fon.com.

And then the whole Freewlan team who at this moment even without a Fonera plus is working to our Foneras Liberadas remotely to port the version 0.9 of their add-ons ASAP.

So is revealed at least in part the reason of my low activity in the blog of last weeks since all my (really few) free time was devoted to this project.

Fonblog.eu will be in the forthcoming days a hub for everyone who wants to collaborate and join the team to tweak and improve.

That’s all folks . I wish you a merry Fonera plus unlocking

Steve asks for Fonera Liberada

Just after short time Martin left the Apple headquarter in Cupertino , I received an email from Steve asking me how to control la fonera plus just received as present.

He told me that he finds unfair that Martin unlocked his Iphone and with la fonera he can’t do the same.

I replied that I’m sorry , but it needs to wait until 29 october , when we will be ready to release the hack.

Once again , sorry Steve.

Unlocking la Fonera Plus

We are working to an easy and simple method to unlock la Fonera Plus .

We are still in Beta test. A very comprehensive documentation is under development .

We are preparing a multilingual wiki for step by step instructions. Also we are looking for translators for Spanish , German and Chinese for the whole set of howto’s .

If you want to contribute to the project drop me an email , I will give you all the instruction.

We have dead line 29 October 2007 , if you want to add a countdown ticker to your blog , here’s the code

Small Ticker suitable for sidebars :

<a href="http://www.TickerFactory.com/"&gt;
<img border="0" src="http://tickers.TickerFactory.com/ezt/d/4;10755;442/st/20071029/e/Unlocking+La+Fonera+Plus+/dt/6/k/7ce7/s-event.png"/></a&gt;

If you want to embed as signature in BB or Forums the countdown , you can grab this code :

 [url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/]
[img]http://tickers.TickerFactory.com/ezt/d/4;10755;442/st/20071029/e/Unlocking+La+Fonera+Plus+/dt/6/k/7ce7/event.png[/img]
[/url]

Stay tune to this blog , more infos in the forthcoming days.