AREDN Development Plan 2022

Following their recent code production release, AREDN has embarked on an ambitious development plan.  Here’s a basic overview of what is on their plate

Replace Perl code with Lua

The programming language for the user interface, services and many other functions is written in Perl.   The Perl libraries are very large and AREDN has embarked upon a project to replace it with Lua, a much lighter weight programming language designed to run in embedded devices.  

In steps, the team will update the “read-only” page to Lua: 

Main, Mesh Status, etc.

Then the read-write pages will be updated: 

• Basic Setup     

• Port Forwarding DHCP and Services     

• Tunnel Server

• Tunnel Client

• Administration     

• Advanced

• Configuration

• And some others

Resync with OpenWRT

Then the code base will be updated to OpenWRT 21.02.1.  Besides code enhancements and security fixes, it brings in:

• Multiple interfaces

• New interface definitions

• API updates (Lua)

• 802.11AC device drivers

Due to the elimination of Perl, enough space may be freed up to have the tunnel modules  installed by default.

A New User Interface (UI)

When that is all done, the UI will be freshened to a more modern and more usable version.

These are a lot of changes and will require a lot of effort to complete.  The team projects these will be completed by the end of 2022.

They will, of course, continue to work on support of newer devices, including AC-devices.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  While AREDN encourages you to download, install and test the nightly builds and report any issues found,  DO NOT install them in any node that doesn’t have easy access (e.g., towers, water tanks or mountain tops).  By definition nightly builds are not to be considered production grade software.