Dwebcamp
dwebcamp is a hackercamp organized by the Internet Archive. => https://dwebcamp.org/
In 2026 it was held near Berlin at Alte Hölle and Freifunk Berlin assisted in providing the Network.
Setup
we decided to have every AP act as its own Network and peer with each other and a Core router Providing Internet Access.
This Approach was chosen since we could run without Client Isolation/Filtering etc. Therefore you can provide services on your Phone/Laptop to other attendees or use true p2p messaging Apps.
We mainly used Cudy AP3000 Outdoor Accesspoints running on OpenWRT 25.12.5 and Mikrotik Netpower 16P as switches.
The SSID was dweb.freifunk.net and only accessible over 5GHz. In a single tent we also added a 2.4 GHz one for e.g. esp32s.
Hardware:
- 16x Cudy AP 3000 Outdoor
- 6x Mikrotik Netpower 16p
- Lenovo m720q for Internet Access
Software:
We used a dedicated bbb-configs branch to create the images. Every AP was its own Location and the core router was used for monitoring the switches etc.
We used it to document changes, even if we changed settings on devices without reflashing them.
Learnings
Since this was the first time we ran this Setup we had a few learnings:
Pre-Flash the APs with Saner wifi Defaults
Every AP we added broadcasted the default Wifi SSID with Max Power on the Same channel. We should prepare them with lower power, a randomized channel and a different SSID to make the Setup easier. Otherwise a lot of people connect to it while you are still in the process of optimizing the Settings, which leads to frustrated users.
Wifi Settings
During the Event we massively reduced the Max Wifi Power and uci set wireless.radio0.cell_density=3
IPv6 RA Lifetime
While every phone requested a new IPv4 Address when changing APs, we noticed that the IPv6 RA was "sticky"
MTU
Our default MTU for the Tunnels to our Backbone (1280) was later Increased to 1412. We should have done this right away.
Out of memory Events
We Noticed that the APs had a lot of Out of memory Events which stopped Traffic for some users.
At first we suspected bgpdisco, but after deactivating it we realised it is the wifi Driver.
Moving to the OpenWRT Snapshot version solved this.
Prepare monitoring
On the second Day we added a Canvas Map in Grafana to display the DHCP Leases per AP. This helps to better Visualize where a lot of users connect. Having Custom Dashboards helped a lot in Debugging issues, and this can be prepared in Advance.
