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Router-to-router radio backhaul over an open 802.11s mesh interface, with FIPS providing all encryption (Noise IK), authentication, and routing on top of bare L2 neighbor links. The mesh runs OPEN with mesh_fwding 0 — SAE would duplicate the Noise layer and force ath10k raw mode, and FIPS is the routing layer — so the Noise handshake is the real auth/encryption boundary and FIPS's spanning tree does the routing. fips-mesh-setup: an opt-in UCI helper that creates a per-radio mesh-point interface (radio0 -> fips-mesh0, radio1 -> fips-mesh1; trailing-digit derivation with a free-index fallback and a collision guard). Radio setup stays opt-in — a package must not commandeer radios on install. 'remove' takes an optional radio and otherwise removes all instances. Dual-band routers get one instance per radio; FIPS treats the two backhaul paths as failover, not multipath: it keeps one active link per peer (cross-connection resolution picks a single winner), and the second band stands by, re-establishing the peer after keepalive timeout — traffic never uses both bands at once. fips.yaml ships the mesh0/mesh1 Ethernet-transport entries commented out, so a stock install that never creates fips-mesh* logs no per-boot "interface missing" bind warning. fips-mesh-setup uncomments the matching meshN block when it creates the interface and re-comments it on remove, so the flash-and-drop-in flow needs no manual config edit. The file is rewritten 0600-first (it may hold an inline nsec) via an atomic replace. Two field-found silent non-peering causes are surfaced by the helper and the guide: - Same channel: mesh points only peer on a shared channel, and 'auto' lets each radio pick its own. The helper prints the radio's band/channel and warns loudly on 'auto' with the exact uci command to pin one; the how-to gains an ordered no-peers triage (channel mismatch, on-air scan check, DFS CAC wait, regdomain). - STA channel capture: a client (sta) interface drags the whole radio to its upstream AP's channel, so a mesh pinned elsewhere never joins and does not recover until the STA disconnects. The helper warns when the target radio carries a STA; the guide documents the incompatibility of a roaming uplink with a fixed-channel mesh on the same radio. Both the create and remove paths run 'wifi reload', which briefly drops every client AP on all radios; the how-to sets that expectation. Regression test: the shipped OpenWrt fips.yaml must parse via the real Config deserializer in both states — as shipped (mesh inactive) and after the uncomment the helper performs. Packaging: the helper is installed across the ipk/apk/buildroot paths (three synced copies), with the CI structural checks and shellcheck targets extended to cover it. Full guide in docs/how-to/set-up-80211s-mesh-backhaul.md.
FIPS Documentation
FIPS (Free Internetworking Peering System) is a self-organizing encrypted mesh network built on Nostr identities, capable of operating over arbitrary transports — local networks, the public internet, Tor, Bluetooth, or point-to-point links — without central infrastructure.
With FIPS, your machine becomes a node in the mesh with a self-generated cryptographic identity. There are two ways to deploy it.
As an overlay on top of existing IP networks, FIPS lets your node reach any other FIPS node wherever it sits — behind a NAT, on a different ISP, on a phone over cellular, on a laptop with only Bluetooth in range, or behind a Tor onion. The mesh forwards IPv6 traffic transparently and end-to-end encrypted, with no central VPN concentrator or coordinating server.
From the ground up over raw Ethernet, WiFi, or Bluetooth, FIPS provides a complete permissionless network without any pre-existing IP infrastructure, ISP, or DNS. Any node that joins the link gets routable IPv6 addresses, peer discovery, and a path to every other node automatically.
Either way, existing networking software runs over it unchanged: SSH, HTTP servers, file transfer, anything IPv6-native works the same way it would on a local network.
New to FIPS? Start with the Getting Started guide.
Documentation Sections
Tutorials
If you are starting from scratch and want a guided path to a working mesh, go here.
How-To Guides
If you have a specific task in mind — enabling a feature, deploying a component, diagnosing a problem — go here.
Reference
If you need to look up wire formats, configuration keys, command flags, or counter inventories, go here.
Design
If you want to understand how the mesh self-organizes, why FIPS makes the choices it does, or how the pieces fit together, go here.