While rooftop nodes are more manageable, more efficient, more durable, and more reliable, their cost of a few hundreds of dollars can be prohibitive to many communities. Community networks built on a budget may wish to make use of recycled desktop computers. This is possible with CUWiNware's CD (ISO) image.
Typically a low resource node is placed in an attic to minimize the cable run to an antenna on the rooftop. A low resource node may also be placed near a window with an antenna in a tall building or a building very close to another CUWiNware node.
Most hardware issues from the Rugged Outdoor node apply to the indoor low resource node. Here are notes on additional considerations.
While the CUWiNware software will operate on most 486 or better platforms, most old consumer-grade 486 and original Pentium desktop machines have such old motherboards that PCI Wireless NICs or PCI/PCMCIA bridge cards will not function properly. Check to see if your wireless card requires PCI 2.0 and, if so, whether the motherboard of the desktop you are using has a PCI 2.0 compliant motherboard.
Your options for a wireless NIC are to use a PCI wireless card, a USB wireless card, or a PCI/PCMCIA bridge card with a PCMCIA wireless NIC. It is probably easiest and cheapest to find a compatible PCI card.
It is easiest if the BIOS on your low resource node supports booting from CD-ROM. Some very old motherboards do not support this. If you can't boot from CD-ROM, it is possible to bootstrap with a special floppy disk which will then hand over control to the CD image.
An attic-based node will probably not have a keyboard attached to it. You'll want to disable the requirement in the BIOS that a keyboard be attached. Otherwise every time the node is turned off and back on it will hang on boot while it waits for a keyboard to be connected.
A low resource node has many moving parts, this is what makes it less reliable. You will need a CD-ROM drive, optionally a floppy drive (if you can only boot from floppy or if you want the node to remember configuration changes across reboots), an wired ethernet NIC, and a wireless NIC. There is no need for a keyboard, monitor, mouse, or hard drive.
If you wish to reduce the amount of moving parts you can install an IDE compact flash drive instead of a CD-ROM and Floppy.
n order to interact directly with the node you will need a serial console. Some messages may show up on a monitor connected to the node but the only way to interact with the node is not through the keyboard but through a terminal program on the serial port. The settings are 19200 N81. You will however need to use a monitor and keyboard to access the BIOS settings when you first set up the node.
In addition to the high gain antennas that are typically used with outdoor nodes, it is possible for an indoor node that is very close to another CUWiNware node to simply use the low gain omnidirectional "rubber duck" antenna that comes with the wireless card, especially if it can be put in a window facing the other nearby node.
While the CUWiNware software will operate on most 486 or better platforms, most old consumer-grade 486 and original Pentium desktop machines have such old motherboards that PCI Wireless NICs or PCI/PCMCIA bridge cards will not function properly. Check to see if your wireless card requires PCI 2.0 and, if so, whether the motherboard of the desktop you are using has a PCI 2.0 compliant motherboard.
Your options for a wireless NIC are to use a PCI wireless card, a USB wireless card, or a PCI/PCMCIA bridge card with a PCMCIA wireless NIC. It is probably easiest and cheapest to find a compatible PCI card.
It is easiest if the BIOS on your low resource node supports booting from CD-ROM. Some very old motherboards do not support this. If you can't boot from CD-ROM, it is possible to bootstrap with a special floppy disk which will then hand over control to the CD image.
An attic-based node will probably not have a keyboard attached to it. You'll want to disable the requirement in the BIOS that a keyboard be attached. Otherwise every time the node is turned off and back on it will hang on boot while it waits for a keyboard to be connected.