Access to One's Own Nodes in Various Places

Two answers, depending ...  If you're on the mesh, then you navigate to your node and then you can do whatever you want remotely by logging in as your node admin.

If you're not on the mesh but have internet, then you need to have someone with a tunnel server give you credentials.  I just setup a Gl.i device that fits in my travel laptop bag.  It connected me via hotel wifi to the tunner server on my local mesh (OR) and I was on the mesh and able to look things over from 3K miles away.

You have to learn about setting up tunnel clients, then learn how to connect via wifi if no ethernet port is available to you where you are.

Ed
 

I assume you can access each node via the WAN port from your local network. but you can't get to the other nodes from that access? 

if that is the case, then you have to either access one of the nodes via Ethernet at one of the nodes or enable wifi access on one of the nodes and access it that way. this will allow you to explore the network/access the other nodes.

there might be another way to do this once you access the node from the WAN but i haven't be able to figure it out myself.
 

"we have...set up several nodes... Some are RF...some are not"
More information please.

Does 'Some are RF' mean 'Some are RF connected' ?
Does 'some are not' mean 'Those that are not RF connected are tunneled'?
IOW, are all these AREDN nodes 'connected' via RF or tunnel?

"how access one's own nodes"
Commonly, a node is 'accessed' via a computer with a web browser application.
The computer is ethernet connected to the LAN port of the POE injector powering the node.
The web browser uses the address 'http://localnode.local.mesh' and navigates the web pages of the nodes to configure settings.

"how access to specific nodes"
Once the above is available, navigating the other 'connected' nodes is with the web browser
from http links on the local node's web pages.

"on a typical network"
The world wide web is a typical network and there are bazillions of shared resources.
My home LAN shares resources with me.
My AREDN nodes share resources with others on the local AREDN network.

'"sharing" is unclear.'
It is unclear to me what 'sharing' you seek.

"Is there a guidance document that might shed some light on this?"
Start here:
https://docs.arednmesh.org/en/latest/
Especially:
https://docs.arednmesh.org/en/latest/arednServicesGuide/services_overvie...

I hope this helps,
Chuck
 

Hello Gary,

If you have several nodes installed in your home with proximity such that you can/should be able to maintain RF connections between those nodes, then simply type "localnode:8080" to gain access to what your computer sees as your directly connected node. 
This should bring you to the home/management screen of that node.  There is a lot of useful info there, but just take a look at the lower right corner of that scrren.  You should see something like this:

"host entries: 238 nodes / 684 total devices"
This should say something more than "1 node" and more than "1 total devices".

Also check out this entry:  "signal|noise|SNR: no RF links "
If your's says "no RF links" like in this example above, that certainly suggests that you don't have RF links established between the node you are accessing and other nodes in your proximity.

This would be a better indication:  "signal|noise|SNR: -48 | -95 | 47 dB "
In this example, the node is indeed reporting a connection to some node with the values as indicated. 

From there, if you click on "mesh status", you should see all the other nodes you have/are connected to. Simply click on the link to any of the nodes listed and you should be whisked away to that node's home screen.

If you don't see other nodes, then either you are out of range of the other nodes or you don't have them configured correctly (that is, using the same SSID, same freq and bandwidth parameters, etc.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Kent, KL5T

Accessing my own nodes within my own home is problematic and, at least to me, challenging.  I know this is likely to be my lack of knowledge but two nodes on the same home network...RF-linked (AC2, AC3, and sector & small panel antennas). 
 
Is a tunnel required? 
 
I see them on Mesh Status but clicking any red link results in a "can't find" message when I connect to a node via its wi-fi SSID.  If I plug into it via Ethernet, it works. 
Changing Advanced Configuration settings doesn't seem to make it work either via wi-fi.  Using a node's (ac2 or ac3) wi-fi allows me to get to the Internet but not use most of the links here and there to other nodes elsewhere "within the mesh"

      You're fiddling with stuff that should not matter.  Internet and AREDN mesh are two completely different things, they are NOT cross connected unless you are making serious mistakes or doing some highly advanced stuff that requires a high level of knowlege re firewalls and protocols.  Go back to the basics and start over is what I'd recommend.

Ed
 

Gary,
First of all, welcome to the AREDN community.  It sounds like you have multiple nodes connected in varying methods.  Might be useful to post a drawing of what all is there and how the various nodes are connected.  I am in the same condition.  At this moment there are 10 nodes at my house.  Let's see if this image posts correctly.  The image did not post, so here is a direct link to it:  http://k6ccc.org/images/Home%20AREDN%20network.png

My non-consumer grade router connects to a LAN port on the hAPac3 and gets a 10.x.y.z address.  My home computer gets to the AREDN network by way of my router since the router knows that 10.0.0.0/8 is reachable via the hAPac3.  The DNS server knows that any url ending in .local.mesh is reachable via the hAPac3.  This is one of several ways to connect, but not the most common.  The black links are DtD, purple-ish is 2.4 GHz, blue is 3 GHz, and orange is 5 GHz.
One note I will make is there are times where it is VERY useful to know what the IP addresses are for each node.  I have bookmarks for mesh node name, mesh IP, LAN IP, and if there is one the WAN IP for every one of my nodes (and some others).  The node IPs are available from the main status page.  The image did not post so here is a direct link to it:  http://k6ccc.org/images/AREDN%20IPs.png
 

Another good tool for evaluating network performance and identifying issues is mtr ("My Trace Router) on Linux (on Windows it's WinMTR).  It will report the quality of each network link from source to destination.

Orv W6BI