Now that the article has been printed in 2600 magazine, Volume 33, Issue 3 (2016-10-10), I’m able to republish it on the web. The article below is my submission to 2600 with some slight formatting changes for hyperlinks. Building DIY Community Mesh Networks By Mike Dank Famicoman@gmail.com Today, we are faced with issues regarding our access to the Internet, as well as our freedoms on it. As governmental bodies fight to gain more control and influence over the flow of our information, some choose to look for alternatives to the traditional Internet and build their own networks as they see fit.

Now that we have OpenWRT installed and ensured that we have enough space to experiment and install packages, we can proceed to install and configure cjdns. I have opted to install a GUI package to allow for easier configuration (though I also wanted to see what it had to offer over editing configuration files). The package used here is luci-app-cjdns, relying on the LuCI interface that comes default in most OpenWRT images.

If you have any low-memory OpenWRT device (4MB of flash) you will probably fill up any free space quickly after the initial OpenWRT install and need more room to grow. Luckily, you can transfer your root file system to a flash drive and boot off of it as long as your access point has a USB port. If you are following along with our Western Digital N600, you probably don’t need to do this.