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Southampton Open Wireless Network The Topology Talk. Outline. The SOWN VLAN The Topology Schematic Community Area Network (CAN) Parts of SOWN Core Network Campus Nodes sown[at]home IPv4 addressing on SOWN IPv6 addressing on SOWN. VLANs. A VLAN is a Virtual LAN
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Southampton Open Wireless Network The Topology Talk
Outline • The SOWN VLAN • The Topology Schematic • Community Area Network (CAN) • Parts of SOWN • Core Network • Campus Nodes • sown[at]home • IPv4 addressing on SOWN • IPv6 addressing on SOWN
VLANs • A VLAN is a Virtual LAN • Think of a set of computers connected to a single switch • A VLAN switch emulates many dumb switches and you spread a LAN across many VLAN switches transparently • SOWN uses a campus wide VLAN • Servers in 3 different buildings • VLAN connected nodes on 1 of those + 1 other (SUSU)
The Topology (1) • Where’s the SOWN VLAN?
SOWN CAN • SOWN is a Community Area Network (CAN) • A CAN is a wide area LAN where all users are connected to the SOWN LAN no matter on their location. • Users of the network can connect to each other directly • Has the advantage that you don’t need NAT internally and can offer services such as VOIP and LAN gaming
Campus Nodes • A wireless hotspot providing connectivity to the SOWN CAN • High power nodes with large coverage areas • Have direct connection to the sown servers for internet connection and authentication
sown[at]home Nodes • Plug’n’Play wireless access points to allow SOWN access to be broadcast from users house with the minimum of fuss • Just plug it in to a free network port on your router and switch on! • Makes use of home ADSL line for internet access • Tunnels are set up to sown-vpn so SOWN network access is granted. • User authentication is passed down the tunnel to sown-auth • Nodes are made by Meraki, but run with our own firmware based on OpenWRT (linux distribution for home routers) which is configured to work with SOWN.
nat.sown.org.uk • Gateway between sown and internet. • Acts as a Network Address Translator (IPv4) and Firewall for IPv4 traffic. • NAT is required due to the lack of free availability of global IPv4 addresses. • (also runs the sown-bot on our irc channel)
auth.sown.org.uk • The Authentication Server and SOWN Control Server • When users join a SOWN node this server hosts the captive portal pages which enable login • Server is peered with ECS and Eduroam authentication servers • Auth is the main server on the network and can also control firmware updates being sent to the nodes
vpn.sown.org.uk • Hosts connections between the SOWN VLAN and the sown[at]home nodes • Home nodes establish a tunnel to this server when they are bought online • Runs Nagios to monitor the status of the SOWN network as it is at the most central point of the network
dev.sown.org.uk • The SOWN development server • Allows testing of new services • A place from which new users can experiment with the SOWN network • Acts as the fallover VPN server.
The Topology (2) • When someone joins a node what happens and how do they get on the internet?