AREDN Release 3.23.12.0

Here are the release notes for AREDN production release 3.23.12.0, derived from nightly build 20231018

Enhancements

Added supernode support.

"Supernodes" are specially configured AREDN nodes in various locations which support a "mesh of meshes". With this release your localnode will automatically detect a nearby supernode, if one exists, and will show a new button on the Mesh Status page, labeled "Cloud Mesh". Clicking on that button will take you to the Mesh Status page of that supernode and show you all the nodes and services on the Cloud Mesh. You can navigate to any of them as though they were on your local mesh.

The URL for the supernode map is https://arednmap.xojs.org/ Clicking on any of the node types in the upper-right-hand corner of the map will filter all other nodes out, showing only the types selected.

Remember and reinstall packages after firmware upgrade (AFTER this version is installed)

Simplified search tool

Added LZ77 decompression for Mikrotik firmware, which is now using a different compression method

Cron:

• Now run cron.boot tasks earlier
• Changed poll rate default to one hour
• Added installable cron package for people who need more functionality 

Improved dual radio configuration support in hAPs

Added support for wildcard DNS subdomains

Now using frequency list for scan. Some hardware didn’t scan all the frequencies we want by default.  (Not a fix for the scan issue being seen on some 802.11ac devices.)

Set tunnel weight to 1 and provided UI to change it. With this change, if there are both RF and tunnel links to a destination, the tunnel value can be set high (relatively poor). In that way traffic will only flow over the tunnel if the RF link goes down. This provides an effective method for implementing backup links.

Bumped the allowed Ubiquiti version numbers to support AREDN installation on newer LiteBeam 5ACs. (Probably all new Ubiquiti devices but currently only tested on Litebeams).

Xlink broadcast - Allow xlinks to broadcast OLSR traffic as well as targeting specific IPs.

New Device Support

None in this release

Bug fixes

Now detect if we support firstboot mode (x86 VMs don't support it, so don't show the button in that case)

Fixed dnsmasq directives 

Correctly set WiFi wan mode when depending on the mesh WiFi setting. Corrected a bug where it would mess up the wan WiFi when switching the band of the mesh WiFi

Made LQM neighbor improvements (fixed occasional exclusion of specific DtD neighbors)

Known problems
Ubiquiti 802.11ac devices missing WiFi scan and waterfall info (but fixed in next nightly build).
Note that nightly build 20231018 has been the release candidate for about six weeks and about 15% of all nodes are already running it.  As a result no major issues are anticipated with this release.

Enjoy!