Protein Pudding Instone

Fonera+ impressions

I'm a FON beta tester and some days ago I received the new Fonera+ in test. These are my impressions.

The new Fonera+ model number is FON2201. This version has changed the old logo "Movimiento FON" with a cleaner "FON spot".

The new model is bigger than the previous Fonera as it possible to see:

FON engineers included new things on the board: an internal antenna (bottom left), another ethernet port (the black one) and a new LED.

I searched the serial console on the new Fonera+ board, and I found only 4 pins... I tried to connected my serial adapter and I get the output:

 +Ethernet eth0: MAC address XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
IP: 192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0, Gateway: 0.0.0.0
Default server: 192.168.1.254

RedBoot(tm) bootstrap and debug environment [ROMRAM]
OpenWrt certified release, version 1.1 - built 22:32:28, May  7 2007

Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Red Hat, Inc.

Board: FON 2201
RAM: 0x80000000-0x81000000, [0x80040290-0x80fe1000] available
FLASH: 0xa8000000 - 0xa87f0000, 128 blocks of 0x00010000 bytes each.
== Executing boot script in 2.000  seconds - enter ^C to abort
RedBoot> fis load -b 0x80100000 loader
RedBoot>  go 0x80100000
Failsafe loader v0.2

Looking for board config data... found at offset 0xa87f0000
Reset button GPIO: 6
Reading flash from 0xa8040000 to 0xa825b989... done.
Verifying CRC... OK - 0xa7a3c6df
Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
[sighandler]: No more events to be processed, quitting.
[cleanup]: Waiting for children.
[cleanup]: All children terminated.
Unlocking rootfs ...
Could not open mtd device: rootfs
switching to jffs2
init started:  BusyBox v1.4.1 (2007-06-08 12:11:45 UTC) multi-call binary
: ifconfig: SIOCSIFADDR: No such device

: ifconfig: SIOCSIFADDR: No such device

: udhcpc (v1.4.1)  started

: Sending discover...

: Sending select for 192.168.0.2...

: Lease of 192.168.0.2 obtained, lease time 43200

: deleting routers

: adding router 192.168.0.1

: adding dns 192.168.0.1

: udhcpc (v1.4.1) started

: Sending discover...

: Sending select for 192.168.0.2...

: Lease of 192.168.0.2 obtained, lease time 43200

: deleting routers

: adding router 192.168.0.1

: adding dns 192.168.0.1

: runlevel -> 1

: enqueued

: killall: watch_chilli: no process killed

: ERROR: chillispot is not running

: fonsmcd successfully started

: 36524 00146.187  164591.0     61.0  242031896628819.0  72097.8         0

: 56 15 * * * /bin/thinclient  cron

: 51 15 * * * ntpclient -s -h ntp-1.cso.uiuc.edu
 

There isn't a "Press enter to activate this console" like in the previous model.

I think FON decided to use the serial console only for getting the output from the device to avoid that people can easily manipulate the Fonera+.

The firmware revision of this Fonera+ is 1.1.0 r2. Like the new Fonera firmware version, is not possible to specify a custom DNS in the configuration.

The only way to use a local DNS, or a custom one, is modify the filtering rules of the gateway witch the Fonera+ is attached.

At home I have an OpenBSD gateway that serve also as DNS caching server.

I succedeed to use my DNS server with this filtering rule in the gateway: "all traffic that came from the Fonera+ and is directed to any machine port domain, has to be redirected to my dns server":

 rdr on $int_if proto { tcp, udp } from $fonera to any port domain -> \
        ($int_if) port domain
 

I think is still possible to use the Kolofonium hack, redirecting all dns queries from fonera to the right DNS server.... I haven't tried and I'm not interested in.

I noticed that Fonera+ still NAT all traffic. From a gateway perspective, both the private and the public traffic come from Fonera+ IP. I would have liked to see that Fonera+ bridged the private network with the network it has attached, and NAT the public one ... But I think That this function will never be Implemented in the official firmware.

That's all folks!