Alpha 3

This is the first publicly available release of the Althea firmware. You may wish to take a moment to peruse the hardware table and read the OpenWRT wiki entry for your device.

If the following steps seem too involved preflashed devices will be available for sale on our website altheamesh.com shortly.

How to Install

1. Find the OpenWRT wiki link for your device in the hardware table
2. Read the flashing instructions
3. Download the appropriate image
4. Follow the flashing instructions

How to use

All Althea devices proxy traffic by default, this secures your traffic from other mesh devices. These images are shipped with Althea 'exits' (proxies) by default. We will be happy to include any reputable exit someone may run once they exist.

Every device can accept a traditional internet connection on either it's lowest numbered port or the port marked 'WAN' if such a port exists. This connection will be shared with other devices on the mesh, while you are protected from abuse of the connection by the exit servers and Althea you should check if the terms of service of your provider allow sharing or reselling your connection.

The highest numbered port on each device is the LAN port, every port between the WAN and LAN ports is a mesh port and will be used to negotiate and share connections with peers. You can use Ethernet cables, point to point antennas, switches, or any L2 connection.

Images marked -mesh-5ghz below use their internal 5ghz radio to mesh with each other. This currently works for devices of the same model, but not necessarily devices of mixed models. The 2.4ghz interface is used normally.

Once you flash your Althea device plug into the LAN port or connect to the wifi network and navigate to http://192.168.10.1/althea

Once there you can use the 'Router settings' page to change the WiFi names and passwords, and the 'Network settings' page to connect to a different exit. The other pages are not yet fully functional.

Likewise payments for traffic are not yet functional, currently balances are computed by the routers based on traffic passed. This isn't really stored, or well communicated to the user, but you can see some of it on the payments page.

If you want to build a full scale network see the getting started guide.

If you have any questions or need help drop by our matrix chat or the development forum and feel free to ask questions.

Privacy in Althea

Traffic is protected from other members of the mesh, but not from exit servers, we provide free exits for interested users at this time.

By default these images collect no information and connect you to the Althea test exit. If you want working Netflix and other streaming services you can provide an email and select the Althea production exit for your country.

When signing up for the production exit we will perform a simple ip check and use your email to confirm you are actually A) Human B) in the correct region so that streaming services don't ban us.

We will also use your email to notify you of downtime, or other information about Althea and your regional exit. If you don't wish to consent to this you can setup your own exit, it should be pretty straightforward using this automation.

At some point in the future we may push an update with an opt-in statistics gathering program. This will collect only the following information. System load average, number of peers, error statistics from network interfaces, uptime, and version data about system software. This data will be transmitted anonymously and used only to improve the Althea software.

We don't store any traffic or traffic metadata except as required by law.

Early Alpha

This is an early Alpha release of Althea, to use flash onto your router and run the /etc/setup.ash script

internal_ip=<> ash /etc/setup.ash

This will set the wiregaurd IP from your exit provider, then print your LUCI/WiFi password to stdout, along with your WireGuard Pubkey and mesh ip. You need to send the WireGuard key and mesh ip to your exit provider to complete key exchange and setup.