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travelmate, a wlan connection manager for travel router

Description

If you’re planning an upcoming vacation or a business trip, taking your laptop, tablet or smartphone give you the ability to connect with friends or complete work on the go. But many hotels don’t have a secure wireless network setup or you’re limited on using a single device at once. Investing in a portable, mini travel router is a great way to connect all of your devices at once while having total control over your own personalized wireless network.
A logical combination of AP+STA mode on one physical radio allows most of OpenWrt/LEDE supported router devices to connect to a wireless hotspot/station (STA) and provide a wireless access point (AP) from that hotspot at the same time. Downside of this solution: whenever the STA interface looses the connection it will go into an active scan cycle which renders the radio unusable for AP mode operation, therefore the AP is taken down if the STA looses its association.
To avoid these kind of deadlocks, travelmate set all station interfaces in an "always off" mode and connects automatically to available/configured hotspots.

Main Features

STA interfaces operating in an "always off" mode, to make sure that the AP is always accessible
easy setup within normal OpenWrt/LEDE environment
strong LuCI-Support with builtin interface wizard and a wireless station manager
fast uplink connections
support all kinds of uplinks, incl. hidden and enterprise uplinks
trigger- or automatic-mode support, the latter one is the default and checks the existing uplink connection regardless of ifdown event trigger actions every n seconds
support of devices with multiple radios
procd init and hotplug support
runtime information available via LuCI & via 'status' init command
status & debug logging to syslog

Prerequisites

LEDE 17.01 or latest snapshot
iwinfo for wlan scanning

LEDE trunk Installation & Usage

download the package here
install 'travelmate' (opkg install travelmate)
configure your network:
- recommended: use the LuCI frontend with builtin interface wizard and a wireless station manager
- manual: see detailed configure steps below
- at least you need one configured AP and one STA interface

LuCI travelmate companion package

download the package here
install 'luci-app-travelmate' (opkg install luci-app-travelmate)
the application is located in LuCI under 'Services' menu

Travelmate config options

usually the pre-configured travelmate setup works quite well and no manual config overrides are needed, all listed options apply to the 'global' config section:
- trm_enabled => main switch to enable/disable the travelmate service (default: '0', disabled)
- trm_debug => enable/disable debug logging (default: '0', disabled)
- trm_automatic => keep travelmate in an active state (default: '1', enabled)
- trm_maxwait => how long (in seconds) should travelmate wait for a successful wlan interface reload action (default: '30')
- trm_maxretry => how many times should travelmate try to connect to an uplink, '0' means unlimited retries. (default: '3')
- trm_timeout => timeout in seconds for "automatic mode" (default: '60')
- trm_radio => limit travelmate to a dedicated radio, e.g. 'radio0' (default: not set, use all radios)
- trm_iface => main uplink / procd trigger network interface (default: trm_wwan)
- trm_triggerdelay => additional trigger delay in seconds before travelmate processing starts (default: '2')

Runtime information

receive travelmate runtime information:


::: travelmate runtime information
 travelmate_version : 1.0.0
 station_connection : true
 station_id         : blackhole/04:F0:21:2F:B7:64
 station_interface  : trm_wwan
 station_radio      : radio1
 last_rundate       : 15.12.2017 13:51:30
 system             : TP-LINK RE450, OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r5422+84-9fe59abef8

Manual Setup

1. configure the travelmate wwan interface in /etc/config/network:


[...]
config interface 'trm_wwan'
        option proto 'dhcp'
[...]

2. add this interface to your firewall configuration in /etc/config/firewall:


[...]
config zone
        option name 'wan'
        option network 'wan wan6 trm_wwan'
[...]

3. at least add one ap and (multiple) wwan stations to your wireless configuration in etc/config/wireless:


[...]
config wifi-iface
        option device 'radio0'
        option network 'lan'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'example_ap'
        option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
        option key 'abc'
        option disabled '0'
[...]
config wifi-iface
        option device 'radio0'
        option network 'trm_wwan'
        option mode 'sta'
        option ssid 'example_01'
        option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
        option key 'abc'
        option disabled '1'
[...]
config wifi-iface
        option device 'radio0'
        option network 'trm_wwan'
        option mode 'sta'
        option ssid 'example_02'
        option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
        option key 'xyz'
        option disabled '1'
[...]

4. start travelmate:


edit /etc/config/travelmate and set 'trm_enabled' to '1'
/etc/init.d/travelmate restart

FAQ

Q: What's about 'trigger' and 'automatic' mode?
A: In "trigger" mode travelmate will be triggered solely by procd interface down events, whenever an uplink disappears travelmate tries n times (default 3) to find a new uplink or reconnect to the old one. The 'automatic' mode keeps travelmate in an active state and checks every n seconds the connection status / the uplink availability regardless of procd event trigger.

Q: What happen with misconfigured uplinks, e.g. due to outdated wlan passwords?
A: Travelmate tries n times (default 3) to connect, then the respective uplink SSID will be marked / renamed to 'SSID_err'. In this case use the builtin wireless station manager to update your wireless credentials. To disable this functionality at all set the Connection Limit ('trm_maxretry') to '0', which means unlimited retries.

Q: Is travelmate compatible with CC/Openwrt?
A: Travelmate was never tested with an ancient CC/OpenWrt release ... it should still work, but no promises.

[...] to be continued [...]

Support

Please join the travelmate discussion in this forum thread or contact me by mail

Removal

stop the travelmate daemon with /etc/init.d/travelmate stop
optional: remove the travelmate package (opkg remove travelmate)

Have fun!
Dirk

6.8 KiB Raw Blame History