Probably the quickest way to run Roofnet is to buy a Netgear WGT634U access point and re-flash it with our software, as described here.

You’ll need Linux, an Atheros AR521x card, the Click modular router and Madwifi source code to build Roofnet. Check out the latest releases from anonymous CVS using the following commands:

cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.pdos.lcs.mit.edu:/cvs login

(hit enter when prompted for a password)

cvs -z5 -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.pdos.lcs.mit.edu:/cvs co -d click click/release/one
svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/trunk madwifi-ng

Enter the madwifi-ng directory. Read INSTALL; you may need to install a kernel from sources. While you’re at it, make sure your kernel has /dev/tun support. Build the Atheros AR521X drivers:

make all
make install

Build Click for roofnet, then load the newly built drivers for the Atheros AR521X cards:

modprobe ath_pci

Finally, load the Roofnet configuration

cd CLICKDIR/conf/wifi/
sh gen_config_roofnet.sh | click -

At this point running /sbin/ifconfig should show some new tap interfaces. The srcr interface, which is configured as 5.X.X.X, uses multi-hop routing. The lowest 24-bits of both addresses are based on the wireless device’s hardware address.

Roofnet is also available as a OpenWRT 2.0 package, which can be found here. You’ll need to unpack the files after untarring openwrt, but before building the image:

(unpack openwrt)
cd openwrt
tar -xzvf PATH_TO/roofnet_openwrt_dist.tar.gz
cd openwrt     # (i.e. openwrt/openwrt)
make oldconfig
make
cd ../base
make V=99

This was tested with the OpenWRT 2.0 beta tree from early 2006. You may need to modify the build process if things have moved around.