I installed my first version of Linux close to 20 years ago (cross-compiled minix on an Amiga 500) and have been using WiFi under Linux for more than 10 years, and I have to say things have finally come around.  If you can’t get your WiFi card in master mode to serve as an access point using post 2.6 and 3.0 linux kernels you’re probably doing it wrong.. here’s the experience of a gray’ing hair administrator’s experience getting master mode working on a home LAN to serve as the family access point, upgrading to Oneiric Ubuntu 11.10 server addition.

I recently decided to finally upgrade my “junkbox-based” (you can’t buy this brand of PC at BestBuy but you can get it for free on craigslist)  Internet gateway/LAN server from the 2 versions old Debian/Ubuntu distribution I had to the new stable release.  At 11:30pm I was overcome with irrational exuberance and installed over the working partition.  I ended up at 4am giving up on getting my Wifi card working in “master mode” to serve as the house Wifi access point.  Thanks to my friend Warren Turkal and former googler for nudging me out of the dark ages of and forcing me to use the new standard networking tools.. that eventually solved my problems.  I’m going to pass along a few things to anyone else who still thinks that shell scripting your routes and ifconfigs is the “right way” to do things on on the Linux dominant world of today..

First a little background.  I cut my Unix administration teeth in the San Francisco Bay Area as a Mountain View startup where my first real exposure to production machines was dominated by SunOS/Solaris, AIX, and HPUX.  Ifconfig, route, tcpdump and the standard toolset define my view of the world, and all the client side supplicant, “network-manager” and other client configuration tools designed to make things “just work” never quite work for me and get in the way of my classic world view of how to configure my networking.  When even my googler friend (who I assume is a pretty good bar for nerd levels of normality) says my uses are fringe, I suppose I have to grant I’m part of the 1% when it comes to networking users.  Bonding multiple residential broadband accounts together with hacky ebtable/iptable forwarding scripts may not be necessary for my teenager to browse blackboard but I do like to stay abreast of new QOS and other network managment developments.  Sadly, the time has come when ifconfig, iwconfig and route simply aren’t sufficient to administrate modern Linux boxes and I have to join the 99%.

Under the old world view, configuring wireless cards was a matter of configuring it to “master” or “AP” transmission mode to make the card handle frames correctly and function as an access point.  Only a limited set of drivers for certain cards supported master/AP mode like the the Atheros AR5212/5213 based Trendnet TEW-443PI card I have.  I had tried several variety of Ralink and other cards without success.  Some of the drivers used special commands to manipulate the cards, like the Madwifi packages “wlanconfig” command, but once it was in master you didn’t need much else to get layer 3 networking going, if you weren’t using security.  Once the card was loaded correctly you could give the wireless device an appropriate address, setup your firewall/forwarding rules using IPTables or other tool, fire up a DHCP server and the AP would be working..  Ok, so it may not have been that easy afterall but my classic ifconfig/route view of the world wasn’t fundamentally challenged.

Today, you can’t put supported cards in master mode using iwconfig, even if the card supports master mode.  Hostapd must be configured to get things working, as least for the new (new as far as I’m concerned..) wireless drivers incorporated in the post 2.6 and 3.0 Linux kernels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostapd

Having spent more than 8 hours (ah, what I could have billed this project for back in the day but let’s not mention what I should be charging myself for this adventure…) fiddling with it I took the advice of my friend and installed hostapd and magically the card went to master mode and I was able to setup my layer 3 networking.

I had viewed hostapd as a authentication daemon and hadn’t even been using dhcp for the small controlled network I was using, and viewed it as unnecessary.  Now, if you want to get a Wifi AP working you *must* install and configure hostapd to get the card in master mode.  After discussions with my friend I understand that because of the complexity of implementing WPA and other security extensions common today (required by most Wifi hostspots) it was never reasonable to put that functionality in iwconfig or the other tools.  Thus one takeway is that Linux Wifi driver networking is fundamentally infused today with security at the layer 2 configuration level.

I searched high and wide for “master mode ath5k ubuntu 11.10 oneiric” and found nothing.  So in the interest of saving the next guy 8 hours of wifi’less wheel spinning.. listen to the young wippersnappers when they tell you to follow the instructions installing all these new fangled tools.. because as it turns out, Today, Linux wireless networking does actually “work out of box…”

On the bonding and multiple default routes discussion, I’d recommend reading Darien Kindlund’s Blog post on the subject at, http://kindlund.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/configuring-multiple-default-routes-in-linux/.  Great read, and may keep you in the 1% of fringe Internet network engineering..

The formation of free trade agreements and other international trade efforts are often hampered by points on agricultural policy. Some policy makers remark that the aging of Japan’s population and a related decline of agricutural workers will naturallly pressure changes in agricultural policy–perhaps facilitating trade negotiating. I am not convinced.

The argument is that the decline of workers both practically capable of agricultural labors and able to exercise politicial power will change the debate.

It is true that agricultual workers are rapidly declining. Most japanese can describe a case of a family farm closing solewhere in japan because no sibling cousiin or aynone else is left to farm. Young people who perform their ethical “oya kouko” obligation to their family often find it difficult to even make a family for lack of a spouse.

However this decline in the number of farmers has not been sudden. It does not follow that low numbers of farmers has impacted the ability to farm productively. Prohibitions on non-natural persons (companies) ownership of farms has been one barrier to more effiicient economic farming that comes to mind. However there has been a relaxation of these prohibitions and serious efforts to remove them altogether. There is also Japan’s stuborn refusal to seriously address connections between liberalization of immigration policies and possibility of achieving agricultual policy goals. Thus decline of farmers in Japan does not mean a change of policy is going to happy.

The other prong of the argument about declining farm family numbers relates to political power. Japanese farmers in regional areas exercise significant power by virtue of how diet members are elected. (Diet members are the national legislative representatives to the parliment.) However to effect how rural votes weigh in national elections, you have to have redistricting, and lower numbers may not naturally bring about redistricting. Declining numbers of farmers has happened gradually, and Japan has had many opportunities to resolve electorial districting concerns.

There is something else important to consider when looking at Japan’s agricultural industry. Today the decline measures and shows the total number of people working in the agriculture sector, but of the total only a small portion are actually farmers. The number of people raising the agriculatural bloody shirt in policy debates, naturally may not be granpa and granma whossit living in the hinterland. Like any market sector, interested parties can always hold out a sympathetic mascot to achieve political goals–even if they share little practically with their daily experience.

How can Japan or other countries balance the many complex and important (remember this author grew up in a small Kansas farm town) agriculture concerns with the compelling benefits of free trade? Greater liberalization is key but how to implement liberalization is naturally a throny issue.

Japan could deeply enrich its economy and move closer to finding their answer to resolving agricultrual reform by divesting the central government of regulatory power and strengthening their regional governments. In fact a model very much like the U.S. federalist model has been proposed in a bill in the last diet and past last month. This “doushusei” reform bill could be an important step in achieving better food. better farming, and better government in Japan. This observer intends to follow the reform closely.

Having grown up most of my life in Kansas, I have a particular interest in the continuing debates about the teaching of evolution in school. Growing up there I thought of myself as quite liberal. After moving around some more, particularly going to law school in the DC area, I discovered I was a midwestern liberal or perhaps a bipolar conservative. (More on that discussion in another blog.)

My family and I have been living in Tokyo for several months now and there are alot of interesting things to do. We went to the National Science Museum, http://www.kahaku.go.jp, in Ueno recently. The adults of the group were very (pleasantly) surprised to see evolution very clearly described and represented. The exhibits were interesting and well organized to describe the scientific processes involved at various stages of the Earth’s history. The family makes frequent (usually a couple times a month but in the past several times a week) trips to the Smithsonian National Natural History Museum. It’s of note how different the presentation of evolution “feels” recalling the exhibits and then seeing those in Ueno.

This evening again there was a very interesting children’s program on NHK 3 (one of the Japanese national public broadcasting stations) describing theories on early development of life on Earth. The kids found it very interesting. That kind and quality of programming is difficult to find in the U.S.

While anectdotical, I am convinced there is more and more of a program distinguishing religious from either politics or science. As a result the Constitutional separations of church and state are being actively dissolved, and Kansans (such as myself) are prohibited from evolving. Perhaps without the ability to evolve ever higher intelligence I won’t have to worry about any changes in my government structure.

Ahah! Must be natural selection at work again..

The tone of his partner was incredulous. In the seven years that Sam O’Reiley had known Tom, he had never known him to lie, or cheat or steal. Except for the fact of Tom’s incarceration, Sam had no reason to think Tom could commit the slightest act of naughtiness. Sam also had never known Tom to enter a plea of not-guilty on behalf of his clients. In fact, no client Tom had ever represented had ever plead innocent to a crime. Tom had a way of sniffing around the slightest hint of indulgent talk to find the truth of a matter. However, for most of his clients Tom needed nothing more than a cool logical intellect to discern guilt. Knowledge of a client’s guilt would not under most circumstances move an attorney to seemingly throw in the towel and plead for the mercy of the court. Tom had the uncanny ability to get help for clients, in the process of inculpating them. Seemingly iron-clad judges and prosecutors would bend to the generally reasonable demands he would make. To be sure, his clients paid a debt to society, but they often avoided the hell that was life as a repeat offender. He could negotiate psychiatric assistance from prison in exchange for the hardest labor. He could place clients in prisons where race relations would not require clients to sell their soul to the closest gang for protection. He knew the system well. Surely he crawled his way out of his past life by exploiting it.

Not many a convicted rapist can find a law school that will admit him. Nor can a menace to society, even a reformed one, easily find admittance to the practice of law. Tom did however, by exploiting ever kind grace, and sense of higher liberal principle. Of course, his quid pro quo was to be the defense of innocently charged criminal defendants. Things did not quite work out as some had planned. Rather than vigorously defending defendants innocence, he seemed to be interested in proffering only so much reasoned argument prepare for a plea. No doubt plea-bargains were common place but Tom seemed to working for the other side. In the end, his clients were always pleased with the outcome, five-years out (the average sentence). Hard and fast was Tom’s way. The liberal bar didn’t like him. They felt he’d sold them out, or betrayed his convictions. Afterall, here was the man who had ridden the goodwill of many supporters to become famous declaring his innocence and attacking the legitimacy of a criminal justice system that ignored race only so far as it targeted for it.

Tom declared his sanity to Sam. He also claimed to be true to his convictions. He was waiting for the innocent victim to come along–his pyrrhic champion. He would wait no longer.

Sam had shared much with Tom over the seven years he’d known him. When they started out together as young public defenders, the only thing they shared was the same last name. Tom had finished school at a barely accredited state school, after scraping to finish a undergraduate degree from an equally regarded local school.

Sam’s upbringing was quite different. A wealthy suburban kid who did well in school, he enjoyed a seemingly effortless rise to a top law school, well greased by expensive tutors, prep-courses, and the occasional nudge from his influential father. Sam’s love of the law was a matter of breeding. That certainly didn’t limit his ability. He was an impeccable attorney–wasting his talent in his father’s heated opinion. Nevertheless, his only significant fault was he didn’t remember much of his undergraduate studies from all the drinking–a habit not completely shed.

Tom’s exposure to learning was very different. During his eleven years in prison, he had kept himself busy reading everything he could find. It had paid off. In the twelve years since he had left prison, he had risen to become one of the most savvy criminal attorneys in the state. It was only too ironic that twelve years prior to that he stood in a courtroom for his sentencing.

Today was a special day for Tom. He explained the facts of the case to his partner, ignoring the subtle clues of Sam’s other interest in Tom. Tom sold a story of police wrongdoing, prosecutorial discretion abused, and an innocent boy at the wrong place at the wrong time. The story was a convincing one. It was told with the same passion Tom always conveyed. There was something different from all the other stories Sam had heard. Somehow he didn’t believe it. It didn’t seem right.

Tom continued. Eventually, Sam was convinced that the case was a likely win. He was comfortable with Tom arguing for the client’s innocence. Something didn’t seem right though. Sam left the room somehow confused by the meeting.

Tom was silent. He stared out the window. He was finally ready to tell another story. A story of a boy who was also at the wrong place at the wrong time–a long time ago. This boy however was not right in the head. He was mixed up. He’d had too many things happen to him to be a friendly dinner date. The story Tom didn’t tell Sam would have been a short one. He would have set the scene in a bar, and closed in a bathroom. The story would not have been pleasant, but it was a story Sam deserved to hear. It was a story Tom should have told alot of people long ago. It was a story that would end properly with a judge announcing a single word at its close, “guilty.”

It was not a story Tom would consider telling again. In fact, he had to run to catch up with Sam to explain that they would have a new story to tell about their current client. That story alone would end honestly with the client’s soft uttering, “guilty.”

I am very pleased to be speaking at the The 33rd Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy (http://www.tprc.org/TPRC05/2005.htm) next week. I’ll be presenting my paper The “Ham And SDR Sandwich”: Innovation and Enforcement Issues for Free and Open-Source Software on Software-Defined Radio Devices. http://web.si.umich.edu/tprc/papers/2005/480/SDR-HAM-JamesMiller.pdf

I was so happy to have worked on the Software Radio (SDR) and Cognitive Radio issues at the FCC. It was a surreal opportunity to mix my interests in legal theory and Artificial Intelligence, not to mention embedded computing systems and wireless technology.

I’m pretty happy with how the paper turned out except I wasn’t able to be as free with my thinking as I’d liked. I’m working on another article (the continuing saga..) that discusses the role of software and the ability to model rules/standards to extend the current regulatory structure of wireless to be more flexible and enforceable at the same time. If you’re interested in reading drafts, drop me a line. I’ll be posting the draft soon on the website.

My first day as a Mansfield Fellow at my first placement–the Ministry of Communication of Japan. There are obvious things like, 50 people working in a small room at desks crammed next to each other, that should make me feel dramatic differences between the FCC and MIC.

However, I am surprised that nothing seemed all that different. Alot of people working together on subjects that maybe one in ten family members have a chance of understanding the immediate significance of. [yes I like dangling participles..] A room full of nerd lawyers, engineers, and economists can only support a certain limited set of new conversations I suppose..

I’m really looking forward to this year. I’ve been in Japan for two months and it’s already been a total blast.

Ok, I’m not happy. I finished my first day of work at the Ministry of Communications of Japan–my first day of work in Japan on my Mansfield Fellowship, and sat down to write a nice English blog… for everyone complaining about the headache inducing Japanese articles… Only to find the entire /public_html directory containing all my web content had disappeared..

Earlier this year, I broke down and moved the website to a hosting company when my “broadband” connection became increasingly flaky.

Now the hosting company has a catastrophic data failure.. with no backups.. and I’m still unpacking. Arg..

Well, it was a good time to clean house at nihonlinks.com anyway..