Nightwing Project

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The Nightwing Project (also referred as Nightwing firmware) is a project to build a firmware that allows the creation of fast deployment wireless mesh networks with minimal human intervention. It's licensed under the GPL v3.0.

It's a project of The LUGRo-Mesh group, which is part of the Free Software User Group of Rosario (LUGRo), Argentina.

Currently it's intended for devices that have an Atheros AP51 wireless chip. Such devices are the La Fonera, Meraki Mini, Ubiquiti NanoStation, Ubiquiti PowerStation and Ubiquiti LittleStation among others. Expecially those devices that have 4MB of Flash memory and 16MB of RAM memory, which is the most frequent configuration found in the market.

The main features are this:

0-config: You only need to power-on the device and it will configure automatically. If it has Internet access to share it will be a gateway node, if not it will be a client node. If a node doesn't have its own Internet connection but can contact to one or more neighbors that are gateway nodes, himself can provide Internet access. It will do it by wireless and ethernet connections.

Public Connection Interface: This kind of connection is not encrypted, it's intended for unknown users. This connection is managed by the captive portal NoDogSplash, which is in charge of the security and the administration of the Internet access. The users of the public network are isolated from them self and from the rest of the mesh network, they can only access to the Internet.

Private Connection Interface: This kind of connection in encrypted (WAP2), so to be able to use it you must know the access key. It's intended for known users and it isn't managed by a captive portal.

OpenDNS: The DNS service is based in the free service that the company provides. This choice adds the possibility to delegate in this service other configuration aspects like content filtering of web pages, domain blocking, phishing protection and much more (by the moment it's only used for the DNS services, the implementation of the others services that OpenDNS provides it's in the project's TO-DO list).

Thinked for Security: The development of Nightwing takes account security from the very beginning of its development. The nightwing nodes provide security to the internal network and to the clients that connect to the nodes, so who decides to be a gateway node can trust that his internal network won't be compromised. So too, who decides to connect to the nodes through the LAN, can be sure that whoever connects wirelessly will not be able to access them. To avoid security problems when two or more clients connects wirelessly, some mechanisms have been anticipated that will prevent that they can see each other. This way, if it can't see it, it can't attack it.

Few Hardware Requirements: Nightwing, besides requiring an Atheros AP51 wireless chip, only needs a minimum of 4MB of Flash memory and 16MB of RAM memory. This is why the amount of devices that can be used is bigger.

To make Nightwing it was chosen the GNU/Linux distribution OpenWRT, in its release Kamikaze 7.09. For the routing protocol was chosen B.A.T.M.A.N, which is meant for wireless mesh networks. It was also used, as a starting point, one of the early versions of Ro.B.In., but currently it has its own and different design. And this design makes the integration of the components, used in the firmware, simpler and with a source code that can be self-explained.