Revision as of 09:28, 4 May 2013

Hello New User!

Welcome to the world of CTWUG!

Please take some time to browse the CTWUG main website (http://www.ctwug.za.net) so you can familiarise yourself with what is happening on the WUG and where information is stored on the WUG.

Many guides, tips, tricks and general WUG information can be found on the CTWUG wiki, at http://wiki.ctwug.za.net/ (once your WUG link is up, even if you don’t have internet, you will be able to access all the WUG sites mentioned in this email).

Here are the details to get your computer / home network up and running on the WUG now that you are linked to CTWUG!

YOUR HOME LAN

Your CTWUG IP Range will be given to you by the person who helped you connect or the highsite admin you connect to. It is usually in the form of:

172.18.x.x/x

This is an IP Subnet expressed in CIDR (classless inter-domain routing) notation. The first four numbers are what's called your 'network ID' - it's what tells us (and our routers!) where your set of IP addresses starts. The number after the slash is your bitmask, which tells our routers how big your subnet is - or how many IP addresses you have to use.

Your bitmask works like this: /32 - 1 IP address /31 - 2 IP adresses /30 - 4 IP addresses /29 - 8 IP adresses /28 - 16 IP adresses /27 - 32 IP adresses /26 - 64 IP addresses /25 - 128 IP adresses /24 - 256 IP addresses

It goes on and on... CTWUG's entire range is 172.18.0.0/16 which means we have 65536 IP addresses in total, which are divided into hundreds of smaller subnets and allocated all over the WUG. Have a look at THIS PAGE to see that in action!

FOR EXAMPLE: If your IP Subnet is 172.18.25.16/29 it tells us that your IP addresses are from 172.18.25.16 up to 172.18.25.23.

But that's not all! Because of the way IP works, you aren't able to use the first or that last IP in your range - the first is your NETWORK ID and the second is your BROADCAST ID. This means that your available addresses are always 2 less than your total addresses. Using our example above, 172.18.25.16 is the network ID and 172.18.25.23 is the broadcast ID so we can't use those for devices.

This means in the example above your devices can have IP addresses from 172.18.25.17 to 172.18.25.22.

The SUBNET MASK for your devices is worked out from your bitmask above. Some devices (like Mikrotik Routerboards) can understand CIDR and you can simple use that. Other devices (like Windows systems) need you to put in the SUBNET MASK. It works like this:

/32 - 1 IP address - 255.255.255.255 /31 - 2 IP adresses - 255.255.255.254 /30 - 4 IP addresses - 255.255.255.252 /29 - 8 IP adresses - 255.255.255.248 /28 - 16 IP adresses - 255.255.255.240 /27 - 32 IP adresses - 255.255.255.224 /26 - 64 IP addresses - 255.255.255.192 /25 - 128 IP adresses - 255.255.255.128 /24 - 256 IP addresses - 255.255.255.0

Again, it goes on and on. CTWUG's whole address of 172.18.0.0/16 has a subnet of 255.255.0.0

If you want to read more about CIDR and subnets, there are a number of good tutorials online - just google them!

Please make sure you switch over your home network to the range given to you by the person who helped you connect or the highsite admin.

If you have internet at home, make sure your default gateway for ‘TCP/IPv4’ setting is set to the CTWUG IP you assign and set on your ADSL modem / 3g modem. If you do not have internet at home, you can set your TCP/IP device to the default gateway setting to your routerboard.

Please make sure at least one of the two DNS server setting ‘TCP/IPv4’ options on your PC is set to 172.18.1.1. The other can be set to one of the following (if you have internet) otherwise you can leave it blank.

• Google DNS Google DNS servers: 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4
• Open DNS servers: 208.67.222.222 or 208.67.220.220
• Mweb DNS servers: 196.43.34.190 or 196.43.46.190

PC Routing

Each computer connecting to the WUG should have a persistent route so that your computer knows where to send WUG traffic: You will also need to add a route to all your PCs to send WUG traffic to your routerboard device and not out to the internet via your ADSL/3G connection. This command requires elevation (run as administrator) or windows UAC to be disabled. You run it in a cmd prompt. Click start and in the seach box type cmd. Once the Command Prompt application appears, right click it and click 'run as administrator'.

ROUTE -p ADD 172.16.0.0 MASK 255.240.0.0 172.18.x.x

Basically, this tells your PC to permanently route all traffic for the CTWUG range (172.18.x.x) to your wireless device and not to your internet connection. Remember to change the x.x part of the above command to the IP address of your routerboard. If successful, the command will return 'OK!'

BASIC WUG INFORMATION

You are joining a huge community network - CTWUG. This network covers almost the entirety of Cape Town and even beyond and is the result of an enormous amount of time, effort and commitment from dedicated wuggers and enthusiasts who run, expand, upgrade and maintain the network. We are ALWAYS looking for more hands and help in this task - the network is expanding quickly and we need all the help we can get. No matter your skills, if you want to help, please let us know - email ctwug_admin@googlegroups.com to get involved.

Big-picture Operations and decisions are made by the elected CTWUG committee, who oversee all the nig decisions and financial affairs of CTWUG. The current committee is: Chairman: TheFox Vice Chairman: Vacant Treasurer: Diabolix Technical Officer: Aragon Secretary: Beetle001

You are always welcome to have a chat to the committe in IRC in #ctwug-comms or PM us.

There are groups that look after specific things on the network too, like the admin group (headed up by Aragon) that runs the day-to-day admin tasks of the network and the first contacts group that helps new users get connected to CTWUG.

The WUG has quarterly meetings organised and run by the CTWUG committee where all wuggers are welcome to attend and have their say and catch up on the latest happenings from around the WUG. It is a great opportunity to meet some new people and get into contact with people you can make links to or connect to. These meetings also feature raffles and other activities. All wuggers are encouraged to attend. Keep an eye out on IRC or the forums or subscribe to our mailing list HERE to be informed of when they will take place.

OPENID

When you first made your WIND node, you would have created a CTWUG OpenID username and password. This username and password is integrated via the OpenID system into many of the WUG websites (including the Torrents, Wiki and others). Please make sure you remember the username and password and that your profile’s email address is valid at all times to avoid having to recreate a new account. You can manage your opened account at http://openid.ctwug.za.net/

GAMETIME RULES

Gametime takes up 25% of the week. During this time downloading is throttled to almost nothing on the network. During gametime downloads and any other traffic identified as 'bulk' traffic will crawl at a snail’s pace. Gametime happens automatically every day between certain times. You do not need to set any settings on your PC for this.

GAMETIME IS: Monday - Thursday: 8PM - 12AM Friday: 7PM - 3AM Saturday: 3PM - 3AM Sunday: 5PM - 12AM

Please note that purposely bypassing Gametime to download from someone on the main WUG during Gametime will get you into trouble. This cannot be done by accident, you have to do some technical things to achieve this. Please see the following wiki article for more information. http://wiki.ctwug.za.net/RTFR#Rules_regarding_Downloading_vs_Gaming

If you wish to join in with the games on the WUG, the best place to find out what’s happening on the gaming scene is to get on CTWUG IRC, join the games channel on IRC (#ctwug-gaming) and talk to the gamers there.

YOUR WIND NODE

Your wind node needs to be kept up to date with respect to the subnet you have been assigned and the IP address you have assigned to your computers at home.

This is your responsibility to make sure your wind node accurately reflects what you have assigned to devices on your home network. MAC addresses are not required on your wind node. IP address, hostname, on 24/7 are the most important fields. This is where all the DNS information is propagated from and is EXTREMELY useful when CTWUG admins are trying to troubleshoot issues.

Failure to keep your WIND node updated can result in your WUG link being disabled until your WIND is up to date.

WHEN YOU HAVE A PROBLEM / FAULT

If you have a problem and your WUG seems to be disconnected, first check it is not a problem on your end and that you can connect to your wireless device. If you are still experiencing trouble, you can contact a CTWUG admin - either by emailing your detailed problem to ctwug_admin@googlegroups.com or by joining #ctwug-admin on IRC.

PLEASE: Remember the WUG is maintained by people in their spare time, so problems are often only fixed after a few hours (or in some cases even a few days), so patience is sometimes all you need - most problems on the network are are general WUG problems and not specific to any one user. Updates to any WUG service can be obtained by joining #ctwug or #ctwug-lounge on IRC.

INSTALLING WUG SOFTWARE

You will need a DC client (this is a personal preference as to which one - WugDC is the preferred option, otherwise EiskaltDC and ApexDC are also good), Torrent software (uTorrent is probably the best) and IRC software (mIRC is probably the best, although not free. For a free IRC client, try Quassel or IceChat).

DC HUB

The main DC hub, which you need to first setup your PC to share at least 20Gbs, have your CTWG WIND page up to date (see the section on WIND above), then go on to CTWUG IRC (http://wiki.ctwug.za.net/CTWUG_IRC), join #Ctwug-lounge channel and ask on of the DC admins to create an account for you (admins have a plus sign next to their nick). The main DC hub address is dchub.ctwug.za.net. If you have any problems getting connected, please contact me, as I am an admin on the CTWUG DC Hub.

On the main DC hub, please follow the rules – do not share or download any adult material and be nice to other users. The full list of rules can be found at http://dchub.ctwug.za.net/DC/

If you have problems with the hubs connecting or doing searches, you should first check it's not a PC firewall issue. Turn off your firewall, try again. If that solves the problem, you can put your firewall back on, but you need to add exceptions to your firewall for ports 1511, 2222 and 2223, TCP and UDP, Incoming and Outgoing. If not, please get help in the #ctwug-lounge IRC channel.

TORRENTS

The torrent site on the wug is http://torrents.ctwug.za.net. There are servers on the WUG that automatically publish content to the torrent site, but anyone is free to create and share content via the Torrent website. To login and download torrent files, you will register an account on the torrent site.

Regarding seeding of torrents - please do not immediately remove torrents from your torrent client as soon as the torrent is downloaded. The WUG only works because people share and leave their torrents up for a while so that other people who come later can download them from a source close to them on the WUG – the more people share, the more efficient the available bandwidth on the WUG becomes.

IRC

There are two main IRC channels which might be of interest to you. You can connect to IRC using one of the servers located at http://wiki.ctwug.za.net/CTWUG_IRC.

1. ctwug is the main WUG channel. Please do not discuss piracy of any sort including DC and torrent services here. This is for general WUG chat only.
2. ctwug-lounge is the channel where you can get help with DC and Torrents, and discussion on copying, etc is allowed. It is only accessible via the WUG and not the internet and your DNS must be right).

How to configure your DC++ and Torrent client can be found on this wiki page http://wiki.ctwug.za.net/Howtos.

WELCOME!

Lastly, we hope you enjoy everything CTWUG has to offer and we encourage you to get involved in the community and social aspects the network offers. Come along on installs, join us when we have meetings and socials and come out to the CTWUG quarterly meetings. Many a good friendship has been made many good friends through CTWUG!

If you have any more questions, feel free to join IRC and ask us!