fonosfera

In my previous post, I promised to say a bit more about the policy regarding blog comments. In the past, we’ve seen a lot of blog comments that were either spam (no relevant content and links to other sites), off-topic (questions or statements related to the Fonera, but not relevant to the particular post) or simply inappropriate (containing swearing or insults).

As of now, the Fon policy regarding user feedback is the following:

• Stay on-topic. The blog is not a place for general questions or remarks, so please only respond with comments relevant to the post in question. Off-topic comments might be deleted.
• Stay polite. It is ok to criticize in a constructive way, it is not ok to use inappropriate language or make derogatory remarks. Inappropriate comments will be deleted without exception.

In short, don’t be a troll!

When you post a comment, it will be spamchecked using Akismet, spam is deleted right away. If it is your first post to the blog, it will be held for moderation. We’ll try to frequently approve posts, but it might take a few days. After your first comment is approved, any subsequent comment should be published right away.

Where do I post my off-topic questions, then?
A lot of users have been using the blog to ask a myriad of questions about the Fonera and its development. Since the blog isn’t quite the right place for this, here’s a few places you can ask your questions instead:

• The forums are appropriate for most questions. Here you will get answers for other users, FON support staff and sometimes developers.
  The forums are good for questions like “Has someone tried installing jdownloader on his Fonera?”, or “What’s the difference between the Fonera firmware and OpenWRT?”
• FON support has some FAQs, a knowledge base and you can contact them in case you’re having problems with your Fonera, your various Fon accounts or accessing the FON wifi networks (use the “Contact Us” link at the top right).
  FON support is good for questions like “How do I register my router?”, or “What ports do I need to open to use torrent downloads?”.
• The IRC channel is appropriate for short development questions or to get help collecting information for a bug report. Here you will get answers from other users and developers. You can also try to ask more general questions, but remember that we’re busy with developing the firmware as well!
  If you use the IRC channel, don’t wait for someone to show up first, just ask the question you have and be patient (rule #1 on IRC: don’t ask to ask, just ask!). Don’t be surprised if it takes a few hours or even a day or two to get an answer: We’re not online 24/7, but do usually read back what we’ve missed.
  The IRC channel is good for questions like “What file handles the 3G connection setup” or “I think that DDNS is not working in bridge mode, what info do you need?”
• The Fonosfera development mailing list is a good place for (longer) development questions. This list is read by the developers and the more advanced users, so there’s a good chance you get an answer to your complicated questions here. This is probably also the best place to ask about the development roadmap.
  The mailing list is good for questions like “I tried to create a plugin to do [something], but I’ve encountered three problems: [long description]“, or “Would anybody be interested in having a plugin for [some program]?”
• The fonosfera Trac is the place to report bugs or request features. Do take care to search for existing reports first. Please read this wiki page before reporting a bug.

And finally, whenever you ask a question be sure to think about it and phrase it properly!

Update: Added a paragraph explaining how the moderation system works.

This is my first post here, I’m Matthijs Kooijman and I’ve been doing some work for Fon in the last few weeks. Fon has a very cool community surrounding their Fonera firmware, but it hasn’t been investing nearly enough time in communicating with this community recently. There is a lot of useful feedback that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. My (part-time) work is now to get the fonosfera, the Fon community, back on track. Let’s look at a few things I’ve done or am still doing.

There were a lot of comments on this blog that needed to be moderated. Partly because everybody was busy and partly because there wasn’t a single person responsible for comment moderation, this list had accumulated to nearly 300 comments. In the last few days, I’ve gone through the list, deleting half of the comments since they were autogenerated spam and approving the other ones. Just for the record, every real comment has been approved, with the exception of a handful of comments that were plainly offensive and contained swearing. You might have gotten the impression recently that we didn’t publish criticizing comments, but we just haven’t been publishing any comments… We might become a bit more strict in our moderation, though, more about that soon. For now, please keep to on-topic comments, and use the proper channels (forums, IRC, trac) for other things you want to share.

There’s also the trac, which is full of tickets. Some of these address very real bugs, a lot more suggest very useful features, but there is also a lot of duplication and some (spam) polution in there. To turn the trac into a useful development tool again, I’ve started reviewing tickets. The first goal is to filter out duplicate issues, remove useless tickets (that need more information but have not contact information, or that are really configuration problems instead of real bugs), sort the issues into different components, firmware versions, etc. and sometimes even try to confirm the bug or even fix it. So far, I’ve looked at over 150 tickets and there’s still over 250 to go.

To improve the quality of (new) tickets, we’ve also cleaned up the ticket metadata a bit. There is now a hardware field to choose either 2.0n or 2.0g, the list of versions and components is more complete and some useless fields have been removed or hidden from anonymous users.

We have also enabled anonymous commenting for tickets. If you report a problem, you can now supply additional information, or answer our questions in a comment. To improve communication, we have also enabled email notifications of tickets: You will now get notified about all changes and comments to tickets you’ve reported (but only if you filled in your email address in the reporter field). So, if you’ve created a ticket in the past and didn’t fill in your email address, feel free to leave your address in a comment so we can contact you with questions and updates. Note that trac will not make your address public, even when it’s a comment.

This option for feedback on the trac has already payed off: A lot of bug reporters have been supplying extra information and we even managed to nail a few bugs because of that. Thanks for that, reporters!

Finally, I’ve also been doing some early testing with the most recent firmware on 2.0g hardware. There has been a focus on getting 2.0n stable in the last few firmware releases, but now it is really time to get 2.0g up to speed again. I hope to have the next release support 2.0g again (though there might be one more bugfix release for 2.0n first, to fix some import bugs, more about that soon). Note that the next 2.0g release will probably not have bridge mode yet, due to different hardware capabilities…).

Since firmware 2.3.6.0 you can watch the stream of a webcam connected to the Fonera from the internet. It’s not that difficult to set:

1. Install the Webcam Plugin, and plug your webcam.
2. Enable WebGUI access from WAN in Settings >> Firewall >> Application.
3. Redirect the https port (443) to the WAN IP of your Fonera within your broadband router interface.

Check out this page of FON Wiki for more detailed instructions.

Hi all,

Well, here it is: Gari the Hummingbird firmware version 2.3.6.0 for the Fonera 2.0n.

I have not much time to make a long post and I’m sure you all want to just flash it and test it, better than reading my silly comments. Just let me point out the changes we’ve made and what is missing yet. And please, have in mind that only the router functionalities have been improved; the web 2.0 and torrent and downloader applications remain the same (hoping to update soon).

Changelog (mixture from previous stable version Elan 2.3.0.0 and beta version Rudolph 2.3.5.0):

• WiFi driver fixed: we have updated to the latest WiFi driver from RaLink. This fixes most, if not all, the WiFi issues we had. Especially those affecting Broadcom chipsets (some iPhones, iPods, iMacs etc)
• WiFi Country region selection: the WiFi is configured for Spain, but some MAC OS X devices seem to have trouble with this, so now you can chose your country in the WiFi configuration menu.
• Many fixes in the 3G support:
  • added support for many more devices (anything on THIS list should be supported or ‘almost’, many others not in the list should also work)
  • improved the controls.
  • Japanese networks should work now.
  • Fixed the 3G / GPRS mode selection
• The FONSpot feature has been fixed (it didn’t work on the beta Rudolph 2.3.5.0)
• WiFi-WAN mode (WiFi repeater) has been removed for sanity (sorry for those who used it, but it was not very stable yet).
• Easier upgrade process: only one click from your “Applications” interface.
• Bridge mode has been added: this means the fonera can work as an AP on your network and you can use your main ADSL router to give IPs, so anything connected to the LAN or WAN of the Fonera will be in the same network. The only limitation is you need to set a static IP address on the Fonera so you know how to reach it. IMPORTANT: when you set bridged mode, you need to reboot so the private WiFi (MyPlace) works. (thanks blathijs)
• Many other fixes that I can’t even remember now, but many can be seen in the tickets we’ve closed on trac.fonosfera.org

Hi all,

This is the last post on the fonosfera… before the next release!

We are right now (while I write these lines here), fixing the last bugs in the list for this release. They all seem to be under control. This has been possible thanks to the testers Alexandre, Marco, Juan Manuel, Cristian and others. And of course all the others that have been reporting bugs. Thanks a lot to all.

So, please, stay tuned, we will very very very soon have a new firmware for you guys. Only remember, we’ve been focusing on connectivity: making the router work as a router. Other bugs will be fixed in coming releases.

Hi guys, new firmware around the corner.

But we need more testing now. We have done tests with some volunteers that we are so thankful for, but now we need more feedback. We are releasing a Release Candidate for 2.3.6.0 soon.

It is not a final image: We don’t consider it stable and it has bugs that we expect to fix when the final 2.3.6.0 is released. However we feel it is now ready for some field testing.

So, what should you expect from this test firmware?

• The FON Hotspot feature has been fixed. You can share your WiFi again at your will.
• We have fixed the WiFi issues that the Fonera was having with the BCM4325 chipset from broadcom. This WiFi chipset is used by the iPhone 3Gs, many last generation iPods, some Apple laptops and desktops and other brands (Dell etc).
• We have been in close touch with RaLink, our chipset vendor, to make sure the WiFi configuration is the best possible. In previous versions we had a couple of values that were not completely optimized. Now the WiFi conf should be the best.
• Improvements in the 3G system: we have made some internal cleanups so the 3G configuration is cleaner. For instance, you can now reset the 3G configuration when it’s dialing, in case it seems to be stuck.
• We have replaced the software that controlled the 3G dongles with “usb_modeswitch”: a software that will allow us support many more 3G dongles and will make it easier as well. This doesn’t mean all units will work out of the box but many will and others will be easy to fix in the near future.

These are the things you might miss:

• We have removed the “Repeater Mode” or WiFi-WAN mode. It was unstable and until we find out why, if ever, it will be switched off.
• Torrent, DLManager, Samba etc. have had no changes. As we said many times, we will first try to make the base system (mainly connectivity) as stable and reliable as possible.

These are things we know are wrong:

• MAC OSX 10.6 seems to have issues with the 802.11d protocol (country code exchange protocol) over 802.11n. What does it entail: when WiFi is enabled in OSX, it will listen to any APs around. The first one that sends a message containing a country code, will determine the country selection of OSX. Once a country is selected, OSX will refuse to connect to APs advertising different country codes.
  How does this affect users? The Fonera is broadcasting US as the country code. If you live in Europe and your OSX gets a frame from a different AP saying it’s in Spain, for instance, then it will refuse to connect to the Fonera since it is in a different country (US).
  This bug is not Fonera exclusive, (see http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10500601) it happens to OSX with any AP that has a ‘wrong’ country code. We will very likely add a dropdown menu so the user can chose what country the AP is in.
• MAC OSX (other OSes not confirmed yet) seems to get micro-disconnections from time to time. We are still studying this issue.

When can you expect to test this new test firmware?

Well… we are aiming for next week. Can’t promise yet but it looks like we might be able to have it cleaned up and ready for you guys to test. Please, bear in mind it will be a test version and only those who feel confident (or desperate enough) should try it :)

Thanks for reading all the way down to here!

Hi all,

We have successfully tested some of the fixes today (or so we think so) and have an image almost ready for user testing. We have selected a set of users that have been reporting FON bugs consistently and in a comprehensible way in the last months to us. Also, they have experienced most of the important bugs that have been reported, so are good candidates to represent most of the rest.

Those users will be helping us test the firmware in the field. If you are not in that list, please forgive us and be patient. More users means more feedback (better), we know, but also much more coordination work. So, please understand we wanted a kind of reduced and well selected set of testers.

We still are working on some fixes, so what they will test is not meant to be a pre-final firmware, but an advanced stage firmware, with some important fixes. We can advance there is no major changes, don’t expect a cool super-fancy firmware, but just what we considered the most critical bugs (wifi connectivity, fonspot, stability, some 3g dongles support…) fixed.

How long will they be testing? Well, that depends on how good we made our work till now. Hopefully one week approximately should do it. Meanwhile we will keep working on the still open bugs and hopefully have a ‘final-to-be’ firmware ready for them by next week. Let’s cross fingers!

These users are, of course, free to talk about their findings about this new firmware with the rest of the community. They can blog, post, twit, comment, share on IRC… whatever they want.

Stay tuned and thanks again for your patience and trust!!

Hi all,

I am here to let you know a little bit about our current status of work, especially regarding the fonera 2.0n but also some other things.
As promised, now that the Fonera Simpl has been announced, we can communicate a bit more about what we’re working on. Sometimes, it might be that we are not working on your specific device, but we hope you will forgive us.

The Fonera 2.0n is already seeing some progress:
- We have reused the wifi driver of the firmware 2.3.5.0 RC1 which made the fonera more stable and also made all throughput problems with broadcom chipsets (some iphones, ipods, macs and other laptops) vanish.
- The FON funcionality that we broke in the 2.3.5.0 RC1 has, of course, been fixed ;)
- We have added the mode_switch driver: this will permit us to support more 3G dongles and do it in a easier way. We expect to test about 10 models by ourselves and probably will support many more out of the box!!!

These are our biggest focus right now. We are still at the firmware team testing process but will soon get into QA and we also plan to get some of you involved in the testing. We already have a list of people that are willing to test it: either to help us or for the hope of having their bug fixed :)

So, stay tuned, we are already moving little by little.

As for the fonera 2.0g, we don’t forget about you, just these changes are fonera 2.0n specific. The only common part is the 3G dongle support and that improvement, we will try to add some day when it is confirmed it works fine in the fonera 2.0n.

In parallel, we are also continuing with the development and testing of the coming fonera Simpl. We will soon make some code public and will publish everything probably before the official launch in Europe. It is a nice and small device, you will see.

Thanks again for your patience and help, we hope to get you a good firmware soon!

Hi all,

First of all, my personal apologies for not having posted anything in such a looooooooooooong (not enough ‘o’-s, I know). I know many are expectant, many angry and some bored. I can’t blame them.

It’s been a huge load of work since my last post in December. Out of a sudden, everything had to be restructured and rescheduled due to an upcoming new product. Whatever the reason for the decision was, I could do nothing but follow it. I do understand the feeling many might have, of being left behind, especially for the lack of comunication: I want to say that it was 90% because of lack of time (informing is not only posting an entry but following up on it and IRC and forums etc) and 10% because I could not talk about why a new firmware was being delayed and I didn’t want to lie. So I thought it was to better shut up than liying.
As many of you know, we are launching a new product soonish and we need to work a lot on it. However we have not stopped developing for the Fonera 2.0n. The new product is based on the same Ralink chipset family, so some of the fixed bugs and improvements we have done for the new device will also be present on the next firmware release for the Fonera 2.0n.

We have been working on the Fonera 2.0n on a best effort basis and we expect to very soon be able to focus on it with the following target in mind: release a stable firmware that does all the WiFi router funcitonalities well. We are now reschedulling projects but I can already say we are aiming to release it on mid March. We mostly want to make sure we do proper QA this time and not rush, it just doesn’t pay.

This is our short term aim. For the long term, we expect to merge both firmwares, the one of the Fonera 2.0n and that of the new Fonera SIMPL, with the hope that it will be a robust and stable, feature-rich firmware.

Please, accept my apologies, again, and try the new firmware when we release it: I believe it will satisfy most of you.

Thanks

iurgi

PS: there are some unpublished comments on the previous posts and some on this one might remain unpublished too. It’s not censorship (which I’m not against in some cases): you can see we publish very critizicing comments. It’s lack of time to go over all of them to see if they cross the line or not. Somee good ones are unpublished as well. Sorry about that :( They might eventually be published.

Hi all,

Some of you might have noticed that Rudolph has been removed from the location it was made publicly available at. Many wonder why… well, Rudolph had a congenital illness: the FON Hotspot did not work and also, it registered a wrong MAC address on FON’s system.
Anyway, you can still compile the image from svn if you want to use the rest of the benefits.
We are working hard, even if it is Christmas and will try to release a new fixed RC asap.

Also, 2.3.5.0 will be available for the Fonera 2.0g too. A bit later than for the 2.0n, but it will come.

Thanks for understanding.