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DAWN Installation

This guide should allow you to get DAWN running, and check its basic behaviour.

Setting up Routers

DAWN will typically run in a network where one AP is providing core networking services like DHCP and internet gateway, while other APs are being used to extend wifi network range. For example, the "main" AP near the telecoms provider entry point, and one or more other AP on the other side of the house, in the garden, etc. Or several AP distributed about an office building.

The term "dumb AP" is typically used for the extending APs, meaning that they don't directly provide those DHCP type services. If adding APs for the first time as a part of the plan to make DAWN work then it's important to have them configured correctly, and you can find a good guide to that here.

Once those basics are in place DAWN is installed on each of the APs ("main" and "dumb") so that a full view of the network can be gathered.

Installing DAWN

Install a full version of WPAD

Use the local package manager to install a full version of wpad, for example on OpenWrt:

opkg update
opkg remove wpad-basic wpad-mini
# Use one of the following, or similar
opkg install wpad-wolfssl
opkg install wpad-openssl

Once it is installed you should be able to see the ubus methods that DAWN uses to ask hostapd to tell clients to do things.

ubus -v list hostapd.wlan0

You should see at least the first of these two entires in the result (note that the parameter lists have been removed to make it clear what method names should be there):

 "wnm_disassoc_imminent":{...}
 "bss_transition_request":{...}

wnm_disassoc_imminent is used by the RSSI Comparison algorithm, while bss_transition_request is used by the Absolute RSSI algorihm. If you don't see the relevant method then the respective algorithm will not work. See the Configuration page for furhter details on what this means.

Install DAWN

The published version of DAWN should install easily:

opkg install dawn

Developers

If you want to install versions of DAWN that are not fully packaged yet or to work on a fork of the code yourself then see the Developer Guide.

Configuring DAWN

Review the configuration guide to see what you might want to change configuration guide. At a minimum:

  • Be sure to enable the DAWN functions that you want (at least "kicking")

Check That DAWN Is Running

By default, DAWN won't send much to the system log, so it can be hard to see if it is working at all.

If you have an 802.11k/v enabled device then if you place it close to one AP until it connects, and then move it close to another you should see a message indicating that DAWN is asking the device to move to the other AP:

logread -f | grep dawn
<Message here that shows transfer>

If you'd like to see more messages to help confirm DAWN is interacting with the relevant services then edit the config file to set the messaging level to '1'.

See What DAWN Is Seeing

Once it has been running for a few minutes you can query the running DAWN instance via UBUS to understand what view of the network it has constructed.

To get an overview of all connected Clients sorted by the SSID, then AP BSSID, then device MAC:

root@OpenWrt:~# ubus call dawn get_network
{
    "Free-Cookies": { <-- This SSID...
	    "00:27:19:XX:XX:XX": { <-- ...is provided by this AP BSSID...
		    "78:02:F8:XX:XX:XX": { <-- ...and has these client MACs
			    "freq": 2452,
			    "ht": 1,
			    "vht": 0,
			    "collision_count": 4
		    }
	    },
	    "A4:2B:B0:XX:XX:XX": { <-- The SSID is also provided by this BSSID
		    "48:27:EA:XX:XX:XX: {
			    "freq": 2412,
			    "ht": 1,
			    "vht": 0,
			    "collision_count": 4
		    },
	    }
    },
    "Free-Cookies_5G": { <-- Alternate SSIDS may also be offered
		
    }
}

To get the view of which AP each client can see you can use the following. Note that DAWN will try to move a clent between APs when the difference between 'score' value for the current AP and an alternative exceeds the kicking_threshold parameter.

root@OpenWrt:~# ubus call dawn get_hearing_map
{
    "Free-Cookies": {
	    "0E:5B:DB:XX:XX:XX": { <--This is the client device MAC
		    "00:27:19:XX:XX:XX": { <-- This is AP1...
			    "signal": -64,
			    "freq": 2452,
			    "ht_support": true,
			    "vht_support": false,
			    "channel_utilization": 12,
			    "num_sta": 1,
			    "ht": 1,
			    "vht": 0,
			    "score": 10 <-- These scores are compared
		    },
		    "A4:2B:B0:XX:XX:XX": { <-- This is AP2...
			    "signal": -70,
			    "freq": 2412,
			    "ht_support": true,
			    "vht_support": false,
			    "channel_utilization": 71,
			    "num_sta": 3,
			    "ht": 1,
			    "vht": 0,
			    "score": 10
		    }
	    }
    }
}