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Fiber ​

COMING SOONHardware on its way to the bench, nothing tested.What the codes mean

The media converters and the cable are on their way to the bench. Nothing has been tested.

A fiber between two points has no radio in it: nothing to jam, nothing to locate, and no path for lightning. It is fixed and point to point, so it suits a link that stays put, such as a kit and a node on a mast, or two rooms of one building.

It needs no new code in the Bridge. A media converter turns the fiber into ordinary Ethernet, and Reticulum's UDP and AutoInterface run over any IP link; see IP mesh.

The hardware ​

  • A pair of single-fiber media converters (TP-Link MC111CS and MC112CS): one strand carries both directions, 100 Mbit/s.
  • 100 m of outdoor drop cable with SC connectors on both ends.
  • Two USB cables that step 5 V up to 9 V, so a converter runs from a kit's USB port or from a power bank.

What we plan to test, and how ​

  1. On arrival: check the voltage and polarity on each converter's label and on the step-up cables before anything is plugged in.
  2. Bring the link up between two machines on the bench.
  3. Measure throughput with iperf3.
  4. Run Reticulum over the link.

One rule holds throughout: the new interface never takes a kit's default route, and it is never set up by changing the network configuration over the kit's own WiFi, which is the only way in.

Between the bench and a kit ​

A V1 kit has one Ethernet port, inside a sealed case. Until someone opens a case, the converter sits outside it on a short Ethernet lead, and the pair stays on the bench. The later layout is one cable through one gland to a small USB-powered switch outside the case, shared with Wi-Fi HaLow. A sealed fiber feedthrough in the case wall is work for the next kit.

Not tested yet ​

Everything.

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