AREDN wizards, I worked through software installation on an M2 and M5 over SIX HOURS as a newby with the web site instructiopmns. Instructions really need to be updated for Windows 10, and please, thank you for the step--by-step screen grabs, but they are barely legible on Explorer, Chrome for Windows and Safari for Mac. They are tiny, nbot full screen size, and not legible when zoomed in to redable size. End of my rant. Really made it more difficult than it should be.
So the M2 and the M5 are working on a direct connection to a Windows 10 Lenovo computer and setup is complete on the direct connect. Now, I need them to exist on my home station gigabit router with everything else in my world. Cannot dedicate a full computer to the M2 and M5. What's best practices for making them work on a router with multiple other devices? 8080 does not light them up when on the router.
David Ahrendts, KK6DA, Los Angeles
So the M2 and the M5 are working on a direct connection to a Windows 10 Lenovo computer and setup is complete on the direct connect. Now, I need them to exist on my home station gigabit router with everything else in my world. Cannot dedicate a full computer to the M2 and M5. What's best practices for making them work on a router with multiple other devices? 8080 does not light them up when on the router.
David Ahrendts, KK6DA, Los Angeles
Maybe AREDN needs a document something like the "just starting" and "Design Philosoply" pages on the old BBHN site?
Folks who have been at this for a couple years will have a hard time appreciating the different points of view that total newbies will bring.
In this case perhaps a lack of appreciation of what it means that the "N" in AREDN stands for Network.
AREDN is an independent, fully self-sufficient network and, by design, access to the network is given only to computers connected to network nodes.
Of course you can interconnect two networks - but that is an advanced topic which is not within the scope of what AREDN provides as a standard. With more than one node connected you will have to be careful not to form a "loop" and lock up both systems.
There are two things you *can* do (in my experience):
1) You can forward distinct (but arbitrary) ports on on the WAN side of your router to port 8080 on each of your nodes. Then, as long as your router supports "hairpin" routing you can access the status pages of each node by opening the web page from the WAN side. For example, I can access two of my nodes this way:
http://w4brm.no-ip.biz:8147/cgi-bin/status
http://w4brm.no-ip.biz:8148/cgi-bin/status
You cannot access everything using this method but you can have a look to see how things are working. So can other folks.
2) Add a second Ethernet port to your computer. This can be quite an inexpensive USB/Ethernet adapter. Windows 7.8 and 10 handle this quite well and automatically direct requests to the correct gateway on request. So your computer will be sitting on both the Internet and the mesh net (without bridging data between them). The only thing you will have dedicated is a USB port.
Ken
" thank you for the step--by-step screen grabs, but they are barely legible on Explorer"It looks like they somehow got downsampled feom our original guide during a document conversion (high quality images available here http://bloodhound.aredn.org/products/AREDN/wiki/HowTo/FlashUbiquiti )
I'll pass the webmaster a note to look into it.
And let us not forget us dummies / idiots / average hams / non CNE's / me !
