As we have written some time ago, we launched a new product to the market this year: the meshnode 3G. This outdoor-fit device is also equipped with the noted ruggedized casing, which has earned saxnet many praises in the past. In addition to the hard shell also the softer parts in the core are worth mentioning: the meshnode 3G is designed as a 3G-WiFi-Router and – due to a software wizard – yields fast and simple internet access through 3G by means of WiFi. The fact that you no longer have to rely on the usual 3G-USB-Sticks combines multiple advantages: It is no longer neccessary to undergo a lengthy process of installing drivers – end devices simply connect via WiFi. Secondly the meshnode 3G enables you to position the respective 3G-antenna optimally without any restrictions to the place of operation. Last but not least the meshnode 3G is unique compared with other available devices due to the noted ruggedness of saxnet products. The device has already made it through its baptism of fire on the CEBIT 2010. Not only did the device cater for a fast internet access on the booth itself; even off site our colleagues were able to go online quickly and with no effort even in their place of accomodation where there was no DSL present. We were almost overwhelmed by the feedback of the visitors at our booth. Whether the provision of internet access to areas with weak infrastructure, in search-and-rescue (SAR) scenarios or when it comes to linking wind energy parks to central monitoring servers – the meshnode 3G considerably broadens the scope of applications for meshnode devices.
Joins us!
Lateley I had the chance to visit gold mines in south africa with our customer. These gold mines (as seen on the picture, aboveground part) pose very interesting challenges for WiFi equipment: rough environment with very high temperatures and humidity, narrow tunnels with many radio reflections at the walls, in depths up to 4000 meter under earth’s surface. Fortunately our equipment has been designed for exactly these extreme conditions.
As in the previous years, saxnet will be among the exhibitors on this year’s Cebit. We are specially proud to be able to present our new cutting edge MESHNODE 3G. This is a state of the art outdoor 3G/WLAN Router, as with all saxnet products ruggedized to the extreme, yet with a configuration wizzard that enables you to enable WiFI-Users in even the most remot location to hook up to the internet. We are looking forward to showing you this new piece of hightech at our booth.
Last weekend i’ve joined the second Wireless Battle Mesh. Hackers and wireless activists from Belgium, France, Netherlands, Swiss, Poland, Germany and Taiwan were meeting in Brussels to evaluate and test the most popular open source wireless mesh routing protocols B.A.T.M.A.N., BABEL and OLSR. Rather than fighting, we flashed a big pile of cheap routers with the latest software, talked about various configuration and monitoring strategies and tried out different experimental patches and new approaches to improve mesh performance.
I’ve used the event to meet with the other B.A.T.M.A.N. developers and to discuss release strategies (we are aiming for the Linux mainline kernel), new approaches such as mesh channel bonding, interface hopping and multicast performance improvements. We also set up an emulation environment to evaluate the performance of unmodified Linux firmwares in different topologies.
Thanks to the guys from Hackerspace Brussels and Okno for the kind hosting.
The trade show in London is finished. You can tell that by sitting totally shattered in the airport lounge at six o’clock in the morning writing a block article. Four trade shows within ten weeks leave their marks. I have done many trade shows in the last twenty years, but the show in London was somewhat different. Not the usual day to day business on the show, but the buildings, the show was held in. The building has seen better days, it was a rather rotten place. Besides the attendees and visitors, attending the show, the only thing that was missing, where the rats. We have also learned, that you are not allowed to put carpet on carpet, however it is allowed to ruin the carpet with a forklift truck. What difference does it make? We haven’t been told.
The trade show was very well attended, but as noticed on similar events this year, the number of exhibitors decreased. Nevertheless we were glad to meet so many industry and wireless experts. How can you tell that you are talking to experts? Two questions are missing “How far?” and “How much”. We did have a good deal of visitors at our booth and our file with leads is filled. Unfortunately there were many visitors on the booth, who where not in possession of business cards. As we were not willing to rent a business card scanner for an outrageous amount of money, we were forced to write down names or we must hope, that we left a positive impression on the visitors. We have also handed out many data sheets, so that we are expecting feedback from that corner as well. The show is over, but in sales the work starts now. We need to find these five to ten percent of leads, who are working on solid projects and then turn business cards into Euros. Was the show successful? This question can be answered in some three months. But we will work hard, that it will be successful
After we finished up the construction of our stand we were really interested in the types of customers on this special wireless convention. After the doors were opened at 9.45 customers first came a bit slowly, then faster into the convention center. This time it was again a really international mixed customership with a lot of customers from africa and huge parts of europe. As we expected the request of the exactly maximum range of our device was quite low on this special wireless convention, because the customers were mainly wireless experts. The first contacts came rapidly and the request after our handouts and datasheets was as high as we expected it to be or even higher. In summary the customers on the wireless and mobile were calm, interested, and took their time to discuss about different things and getting a new sight in case of e.x. wifi.
A often requested theme was the WiMax-theme. Especially for customers comming from africa the theme WiMax was very important. Our opinion is that bringing broadband access to the people in areas with low infrastructure and a low budget, with the WiMax technology is not the best way. Our arguments in this case are: High license-costs for WiMax-licenses, high costs on base-stations ans high costs on client hardware, which customers can not effort. These arguments compare to what providers of WiMax-networks reported to us.
It was precisely 8 a.m. when we arrived ready for action at the gates of the Olympia Hall. In just minutes we were kindly told and in no uncertain terms that exhibitors were expected on the conference grounds at 10 a.m. and no sooner. Our material had been sent on the truck on the 14th of May but it didn’t show up until 11:30 a.m. So we used the time wisely to settle a few things like getting the electricity hooked up. We were in the middle of laying our carpeting when the management forbade us to continue. Unfortunately we weren’t able to come to a compromise to be able to lay the carpet anyway. We however did not encounter any other problems thanks to our dedicated team.
We hit the road at 7 a.m. Sunday morning, destination London. Collected the team and then it was off to Frankfurt. The autobahn was empty of course making the drive to Frankfurt extremely pleasant. The flight however, especially the descend to Heathrow airport, was extremely unpleasant due to high winds. The drive to the hotel via the London underground was an experience in itself. If you’re the type who feels vulnerable when the lights flicker on and off in small stuffy places or you’re agoraphobic I recommend avoiding the tube.
What about the CTIA wireless in Las Vegas? Is this convention comparable to other trade fairs like the CeBIT in Hanover?
The CTIA is much smaller, the CTIA is only for components that have more or less to do with “wireless”. By the way, I learned that designer-cell-phone-covers for the iPhone seem to have something to do with wireless?! Weather apart, which is much dryer and much hotter than a regular german day in April (Las Vegas: 77-86°F, humidity >20%), what is the difference between those both conventions concerning visitors, exhibitors and customers?
I can tell you this: there are a lot of differences between those both exhibitions!
The biggest difference is the behavior of the customers. At the CeBIT, the standard customer wants to get as much information as possible about your product and about your company. At the CTIA, the standard customer only wants to get a brochure or a catalog and walks away without saying just a single word, except: “Hi, how are you?”, but this seems only to be an american catchword, saying nothing.
Furthermore you can say, most customers are already informed and are familiar with terms like “meshing”. This is not surprising, because it is a specialized fair for wireless components.
A really big difference is also in dealing with business cards. At the CeBIT everybody exchanges business cards nearly the whole day. At the CTIA you’re lucky to catch one with a standard paper business card! If you ask for a business card in regular case the customer grabs his badge and asks for the scanner! Nobody asks for any scanner on the CeBIT.
Summarizing the whole exhibition: it is a great new experience and a completely different way of doing business. But apart from all the differences, the CTIA wireless in “Vegas” as the locals call it, is as well as the CeBIT in Hanover mainly for getting into contact with customers and with contact persons coming from absolutely various industries.
We have now been two weeks in Las Vegas. We are here to oversee the building of our booth and the communication with the organizers of the CTIA Wireless 2009.
When we arrived here we had only plans and theoretical knowledge, because the communication with the local companies has proved very difficult from germany. So we simply started the trip and have visited the companies. The first carpenter was a flop because it wasn’t located there since about a year. The second was a direct hit.
Along with Custom Design Cabinets we built both the stand and the counter. We had to adapt and convert all the dimensions from European system into U.S. system. That was not as easy as you would imagine, since everything is specified in fractions. When done, we could finally start working.
The staff of the joinery are all very nice and work with absolute accuracy. Moreover, they have helped us to find our way in the everyday life in Las Vegas, because everything here is somewhat different. I have big problems with net pricing, because seemingly everyone adds extra tax, fee or similar charges. So beware if you e.g. would like to rent a car which looks cheap, it must not always be the cheapest choice. Because there are extra hidden costs and insurance.
After stand and counter were ready and built for testing, we packed everything for transport to the fair. The transportation and the construction was tricky by itself. You may not even unload or transport on your own. Moreover all this is settled according to weight. To get weighted, we had to drive to the other side of Las Vegas and wait for about an hour for the settlement. Then we finally arrived and wanted to quickly assemble the booth. Once again our truck had to wait for approx. one hour before it was allowed to proceed in the hall, then we had to wait for almost another hour for a forklift driver. We lost four hours of our tight construction time. For the unloading one have to pay a four-digit sum. It was really disappointing here like a lots of money is gone for nearly no work at all.
With strong support of all our staff the booth was built very quickly.
Until the point when a fair manager came over and informed us that our booth does not meet the regulations of the convention center. We therefore had to rebuild the booth once again, thanks to the support of our carpenter this was, however, done very quickly.
Ultimately, everything was prepared and the show could start.
The CeBIT is as good as over. Most exhibitioners have already packed up or didn’t even show up on Sunday. We had only ¼ of the usual number of visitors at the stand.
But all in all it was a successful conference for us. The CeBIT exceeded all our expectations and we have decided to take part at the Hannover Messe. The Hannover Messe runs from the 20th to the 24th of April – that is shortly after we return from Las Vegas. After that it’s business as usual in Germany and after Hanover we’re off to London.
We’d like to thank all our visitors and we’re looking forward to a next time. So, we’ll be seeing you!
Thursday is CeBIT halftime, so to speak. We had an unusually large number of German visitors today. For the last few days the ratio was approx. 90 (international visitors) to 10 (Germans). Last night MDR Aktuell aired the report. Today we had a visit from Thomas Jurk, the “Saxony State Minister for Economic Affairs and Employment” – my statement to him was short and sweet:
“The State/regulatory authority should not make the same mistake as they did with WiMAX and sell the frequencies to the highest bidder, please and thank you. The “new/old” (UHF) frequencies at 790 and 862 MHz that were to be used for broadband supply would have been better taken care of by several providers.”
And last but not least a picture of our stand – this is how it looked all day long:
The second day at CeBIT began with more visitors, lots of interesting contacts and familiar customers. The second TV team came to the stand – 3sat – Broadcast date: Sunday, March 8 4:30 p.m. M*Donald’s was as good as sold out. Perhaps somebody forgot to tell them that a wee conference would take place next door.
Unfortunately the MDR Aktuell report didn’t air. The politician Herr Althaus story and the tragedy in Cologne – two houses collapsing into a building site – took over all of the airtime. Depending on whether no new catastrophes happen, it should air today (March 4) at 9:30 p.m.
We survived our first exhibition day, the booth was already finished yesterday at noon. A few minor problems with our technique were solved later in the afternoon and si
nce today morning we do “normal” exhibition daily routine.
Exhibition daily routine? What does this really means? One does stand the whole day before or behind the counter and talks to customers. Customers are very different fro
m each other, this starts with someone who wants to know everything about Wi-Fi and ends with a network planner searching for the right hardware for his project. You alw
ays need to adapt to a new situation and change in very short intervals between english and german. Overall somewhat stressy, but it’s just a wonderful ambience.
Today evening you can see an interview directly from CeBIT in MDR aktuell at 9.45pm in german television.
Here are a few more pictures from our booth:
The conferences are coming up fast:
12 days ‘til the CeBIT in Hanover,
41 days ‘til the CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas,
90 days ‘til the Wireless and Mobile in London.
We’ll be starting to set up in Hanover on the 26 of February. Simultaneously our new website version will go online. This one will include a presentation of our products and naturally some new content. So, watch for it.
There’s been talk that we’ll be presenting yet another product in London – and there’s no reason not to think so. Personally I’m not really into the conference but I know I can rely on the team – I witness the accomplishments on the way and offer my opinion when it’s asked for. My preparations for the conference(s) focus more on the website content. This time there are going to be a lot more visual elements – I’m really looking forward to it going online.
By the way, here’s another “spypic” of the meshnode II – it will premier on the CeBIT. This photo is the first of its kind:
During third and fourth quarter of 2008 we integrated customer requests, ideas and adjustments into the meshnode III webinterface. Now all our customers are able to utilize these changes with online-update. Version 0.15.1 is updated (from the last version) in the following issues:
- The meshing protocol B.A.T.M.A.N. is now implemented as kernel modul and it’s possible to define the update interval.
- A status page informs about the configuration and condition.
- In a bridge the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) is configurable.
- Dial-in over PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE).
- Adjustments for easier setup with our NMS.
- Saving of positioning data (GPS).
This new version including all new functions is also available via our demo site at saxnet.de/meshnode3demo.
Recently we announced the exhibition in Las Vegas – today it will be London.
We showcase on May 20th and 21st 2009 at “wireless and mobile 09“.
saxnet is at three exhibitions worldwide in 2009. We decided to be at the Cebit too. London and Las Vegas will be trade fairs, it’s worth to be there. It will be our first time at Cebit in 2009, yet with mixed expectations. In 2007 we went to Systems in Munich, but we intentionally wasn’t attending in 2008. Many wasn’t expecting that the Systems in 2008 was the last of its kind (german news article); I wasn’t surprised, because in even in 2007 there weren’t many professional visitors. We got two good contacts from Systems 2007 and we made business with them too, therefore the exhibition was worthy for us – London 2008 was by far better.
We are anxious to our exhibition-marathon 2009. We have a very tight schedule – every month another exhibition – two are over-sea.
March – Hannover, Germany (Cebit)
April – Las Vegas, USA (CTIA)
May – London, UK (wireless and mobile)
This is our DEMAG die casting machine at work. We produce the cases for our meshnode III from Makrolon which is hardened with fibre glass to achieve a high consistency and weatherproofness.
The rescue-system is comparable with a supplemental restraint system in every car. Normally both systems are not interesting. What happen if the connection to the meshnode is lost or the storage-medium is going to quit his work? In this cases the rescue system will prevent the most and the user will be able to continue his work. AJAX is used to make the system easy to use and to make it more comfortable. AJAX is an Application written in JavaScript and is implemented in every Browser. The meshnode III uses AJAX to display the current status. The refresh of the page to update the status is not necessary.
Here at saxnet quality comes first. During the last weeks to cope with our standards in electronic production we prepared the AOI system OptiCon SmartLine from GÖPEL electronic and teached it our circuitlayouts.
With this we have a fast and reliable possibility to search for errors like: wrong populated, skewed or bad soldered components.
Once again I would like to talk about Power over Ethernet (PoE). PoE defines so-called endspan- and midspan-switches. An endspan-switch is e.g. a PoE-able-switch in the server room, an midspan-switch is e.g. a switch which is integrated at a arbitrary point in the network in the ethernet-cable to supply the end device with PoE; e.g. to energize an IP-camera or VoIP-phone, if these are the only devices which are in need of PoE.
PoE consists of different variants of supplying. In a 100 MBit-ethernet the two free circuit pairs (spare-pair) gets used to for supplying; the method for GBit-ethernet is called phantom power.
Common to both variants is the identification of a powered device (PD) to a power-source-equipment (PSE). With this the PSE (e.g. switch) activates the supplying for the PD (e.g. VoIP-phone).
Following the IEEE-standard 802.3af PoE is distinct in four classes. The classification is defined by a specified resistor at the input of the PD. The default class is zero: with this class you are able to transfer 12.95 watt to the consumer. There are continuative thoughts for PoE-Plus 802.3at Draft 3.0, this will extend the capacity to about 30W, but it’s not useable under real conditions. This extension is interesting for meshnode III power, because it would cap the power requirement for power-cards.
We are in the process of developing an extension for the meshnode III (without power-cards) to support the standard compliant utilization of power class zero of 802.3af. A circuit with full 802.3af support is e.g. the TPS2375 of Texas Instruments. With the use of such a circuit the full powered-device function can be realized on the meshnode III. In the future the meshnode III will be provided with the option for Power over Ethernet.
From now on you will find us on twitter for some trivia
There you will find everything which is to “small” for the saxnet blog. microblogging.
To use Realtek-Chips or network-cards in general one must set the registers and fields in the PCI Configuration Space to useful values. That this must not be done during production the values are swapped out to an external EEPROM of type 93C46. All the needed information like vendor ID, subsystem ID and also ethernet ID (MAC address) are on this programmable memory.
The Realtek-chip can be used to access and change these values in the EEPROM, a user can configure his own MAC addresses in the memory-range 0×0E – 0×13. It’s needed to change the checksum at bytes 0×32 and 0×33 after every change. If the checksum is not adjusted the chip won’t load the content of the EEPROM and tries to initialize with default-values which can lead to total disfunctionality.
saxnet participates at CTIA Wireless 2009 in Las Vegas, USA.
Booth #1091
Las Vegas Convention Center
South Hall Level 2
S3 East – Exhibits
Photos from the period 2007 to 2008 (october).
I will post more pictures after the completion of the foyer.
Since a few weeks we are dealing with problems with our printers. In its main function these printers achieve very good results, it’s very fast to print out the first page and the results are fair good. Suitable for daily office life.
After about two hours the printers didn’t react anymore. The first reply from the support was that we can solve the problem by turning the printer off and on again. Of course this is no real solution even if it was presented as such. The good speed to print the first page out of cold state will be annihilated.
After a few more talks it was not possible to localize the problem. The solution was found by ourself by chance. Because of another problem I took a closer look at the log-file of the DHCP-server and detected that every printer asked for a new DHCP-lease about every minute. I had seen before that the entry for hostnames in the webinterface of the printer only accepted 15 chars. This was the problem, our DHCP-server gave out hostnames with more than 15 chars. After we shorted the hostnames the problem was fixed. We are currently in contact with the development section to test out a new firmware.
As mentioned last week here the new version of the web-interface and system-components is released. As of now the new packages can be updated over the update-function in the web-interface.
Systems may be upgraded over the integrated package-management. There are two possibilities for this:
- automatic update, internet-connectivity is needed. The packages will be downloaded directly from saxnet and get installed.
- manual update, upgraded packages must be downloaded and one after the other integrated in the package management.
Already created profiles will be boosted to the new version during the update and should be backuped again. The profiles will be primed for the new functions, nothing will be changed on present settings.
The following packages are updated:
The following new features will be integrated in the next release of our firmware:
- bonding,
- traffic shaping and
- VLAN.
Bonding
Bonding describes a interconnection of a lot of physical cables. The term “cable” if of course extended to wireless links. With the use of two (or more) connections it’s possible to realize higher through-put or higher reliability. Higher through-put will be realized by distributing the packages over the available links. Higher reliability means that the secondary link will be used if the primary link fails. We provide the common modes in our interface: round-robin, redundancy, 802.3ad.
Traffic Shaping
Limitation of bandwidth is an important topic. Maybe for providing a permanent video-stream or a specific bandwidth for a VoIP-stream it’s always essential to divide bandwidth among different applications. Perhaps file transfers or P2P must be limited, but Mail and Web shall be given the full available bandwidth. Our solution for traffic shaping includes a broad range of configuration options.
VLAN
VLAN is a virtual separation of for example a switch-port in different discrete areas. A Header is added to the ethernet packages, it includes an ID which describes in what virtual area the package belongs. Our implementation gives you the possibility to assign a specific VLAN-ID to an accesspoint (also virtual ones, Multi-SSID), this ID is transported over a tagged port and can be handled by following devices. For example a switch or router is able to interpret these VLAN-IDs and assigns the package correct to different departments. In this example every department gets an own separated area and is not able to access data from other departments, transparent and comprehensive between WiFi and LAN.
Demo And Release
An Online-demo of our interface is located at saxnet.de/meshnode3demo/, there you will be able to get a first impressions of the new options. Officially it will be released on 10/17/2008, at the same time old versions can be updated over the online-update.
Future
The next great step will be the integration of VPN. As always we will include a broad range of configuration options in our interface and we will include a lot more protocols and methods as in common scope.
Because it bothered me that the meshnode III can’t be powered over POE (also because of the power consumption), I took the opportunity and searched for a alternative solution. In the first step I cut the wires 4/5 and 7/8 from the LAN-connector, skinned them and soldered them to the two power cables. I was able to boot the node over POE at least with CM9 wifi-cards and a passive injector. But there was a problem left: a POE-switch enables the power only if it finds a specific resistor value at the end of the cable. This is not given, but there are one-chip-solutions for this.
