Frequently Asked Questions

Named after Daihinia brevipes -- a species of crickets, also known as camel cricket. Packets hop over a Daihinia™ network much like these creatures jump.

See also: image on insectimages.org

Download the newer package and install it over the old one.

Then proceed as usual - Install Driver (it will update the old driver) and Select Adapter to work with. Or press Proceed Automatically.

There is no need to create the Ad-Hoc network again.

It is strongly recommended to choose Public if your Daihinia network is open and unencrypted at the WiFi level.

You may choose one of the other two options (Home or Workplace) only when your network is encrypted and you have strong confidence that the security credentials were not compromised (stolen, leaked, or cracked). Otherwise it's better to choose Public too.

You have to install and configure the Daihinia driver in order to access the traffic in that network.

However, it might turn out that your meshing neighborhood is a local-only network and does not have access to the Internet at all. Please ask your neighbors for details.

Beginning with Vista, Microsoft decided to be discriminatory to Ad-Hoc networks and you cannot connect to them automatically the same as to Infrastructure ones.

However, there's netsh.exe which can be started on a schedulable event like computer startup or user logon, to do the required task. Details in this blog post.

If you don't like setting up a schedule manually, consider getting a utility program that can automatically connect. A good example is Maxidix Wifi Suite.

The option with the scheduled task is better for servers, Maxidix Wifi Suite is better for end-user computers.

Although the main program logic is operating at the packet level, Daihinia keeps track of some WLAN-specific notifications that are not available with a virtualized generic adapter that is usually provided by virtualization solutions like VMWare, VirtualBox or Parallels. Such notifications include the SSID query response (to turn meshing on only when connected to "Daihinia" SSIDs) and the association/disassociation notifications (to keep track of neighboring nodes).

However, if you have a USB adapter, and plug it into the VM as a USB device, then Windows inside the VM sees it as a real WLAN adapter and provides all the necessary functionality. In fact, precisely this configuration is exploited extensively while developing/debugging Daihinia.

Daihinia™ should work with any adapter. The best experience, however, is with adapters that have good signal power and sensitivity, and a good implementation of the 802.11 stack.

A typical low-cost WiFi adapter has only 100mW output power, while FCC allows up to 1000mW (ten times more). Luckily, WIFI-Link™ offers 1000mW adapters with excellent sensitivity. (Be caerful, though, as they drain all their power from USB)

During our internal tests, our general impression of various chipset manufacturers is as follows:

• Atheros: good power and sensitivity, very bad IBSS implementation.
• Intel: good power and sensitivity, excellent IBSS implementation.
• Ralink: bad power and sensitivity, rock-solid IBSS implementation.
• Realtek: good power and sensitivity, decent IBSS implementation.

Yes, Daihinia is ready for IPv6. Tested and confirmed to work.

By design, Daihinia si ready for any protocol that can be carried in Ethernet frames, including exotic/proprietary protocols. As long as the drivers of such protocols are well-behaving and query the underlying layer for the maximum packet size (and not blindly assume 1500), they will all work correctly.

No, it does not replace your adapter's driver. It works on top of the existing driver, transparently adding the mesh network functionality when your adapter is connected to an ad-hoc SSID prefixed "Daihinia".

All adapters capable of Ad-Hoc Mode are supported. For a more detailed answer, please see some recommendations.

1. Install the driver for your WiFi adapter, as you would normally do (skip this step if already installed).
2. Make sure your adapter works in Ad-Hoc mode (most adapters do).
3. Download and install the Daihinia package, it will start the Control Application automatically.
4. Press Proceed Automatically from the Control Application.
5. When prompted to select the adapter, click on your WiFi adapter in the provided list, click OK.
6. Create the Ad-Hoc network prefixed "Daihinia" in the network name (SSID), if not performed automatically.
   Examples: "Daihinia" (for an open network), "Daihinia:Joe's-network" (for a private network). The default "Daihinia" SSID is reserved for open networks with no encryption that are available for anyone to join, and the "Daihinia:your-net-name" SSIDs for private and/or secured networks.
   Note: multihop capabilities are turned on only when you are connected to networks with the prefix "Daihinia" in their names.
7. If you created the network manually, make sure the security parameters are the same on all computers in the network.

If you update from a previous version, it is sufficient to press the Proceed Automatically button. It will remove the old driver, install the new one, then prompt you to select the adapter.

See also: How to connect the mesh network to Internet?

It is sufficient to start the Control Application and press the Select Adapter button, then deselect your wifi adapter in the list.

Beginning with v1.0.1132, the driver activates the mesh network functionality only when connected to SSIDs prefixed "Daihinia", thus you don't need any manual action when connecting to a regular wifi network.

Same as you would normally do -- via the Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) feature of Windows.

Open the properties of the adapter that is connected to Internet, select the Advanced tab, then select the Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection check box. If there's a drop-down list near the check box, select your wireless connection.

Daihinia is a network layer based on the Ad-Hoc mode of WiFi operation, while the connection to an AP is the infrastructure mode. These are two WiFi modes that work completely different and cannot be mixed with one another. One given WiFi adapter cannot be connected to an Ad-Hoc and an Infrastructure network at the same time.

However, if you have two WiFi adapters on the same computer, you can set up traffic routing between them at the IP level, in this case one adapter should be connected to the AP and another one operates on the Daihinia-based mesh network.

With two adapters set up as said above, you can share the Internet connection provided by the AP to your local Daihinia-based mesh network in the same manner as you would share an usual wired connection (see the related question).

You have to install Daihinia driver on all stations of your daihinia network; without the driver computers will not have access to the traffic in the daihinia network.

No, it does not deal with power/sensitiity. It just repeats the packets that were sent by nearby stations so other stations could receive them. Thus, we can say it increases the range of packet destination, not the range of any given radio.

Please make sure you are connected to Internet at the moment of driver installation. Windows needs to traverse the entire signature chain before properly installing the driver. Failing to do so may result in improper installation of the driver.

The signal strength you are used to observe is meant for Infrastructure Mode, when you are connected only to one point - the Access Point. And that indicator shows the signal quality between you and the AP.

In Ad-Hoc Mode, however, your station may be connected to several other stations at the same time, thus it's hard to show one indicator representing all of them.

Different manufacturers decided differently on how to report the signal strength in Ad-Hoc Mode: the smarter ones report the average value, and the cheapest ones always report a maximal signal strength no matter how weak the actual signals are.

See also: choosing a good adapter.

By default, Windows 2008 installs itself without the WLAN Service. To add and enable it, please follow these steps:

1. Go to Server Manager
2. Add a new feature
3. Select to add the Wireless LAN Service
4. Finish the installation
5. Install your WIFI drivers if not automatically detected.

Cancel the hardware wizard, close all open programs, start System Restore, then restore your system to the last point labeled "Before Daihinia Driver Installation".

After the system gets restored to that point and reboots, you may install the Daihinia driver again.

It's a known issue. On a HP-Compaq Notebook PC with preinstalled Windows Vista and HP software, you might get SPAPI_E_NO_DRIVER_SELECTED when trying to install Daihinia Driver.

If you try a manual installation of the driver (via adapter's property window), it will show the driver installed, but it will not work. This is because said HP software hooks to the INetCfg interface and related classes, preventing the driver to install in an official way via INetCfg (as documented and recommended by Microsoft).

Please remove the misbehaving software supplied by HP, then retry the driver installation normally via Daihinia Control App.

Feel free to contact HP on this issue, because it causes problems with any NDIS IM, not only Daihinia. This also means your antivirus or firewall might have no effect at all even if it looks like it is installed correctly.

Similar case with a Dell laptop and failing to install vmware bridge.

Daihinia is a network driver and cannot be installed without administrative privileges. Do not give such privileges to regular users and they won't violate your company's Security Policy.

The User's Guide provided in the package contains the step-by-step instructions on the Ad-Hoc network setup. Daihinia's driver activates itself when the SSID is prefixed Daihinia (example: Daihinia:Joe's-network).

If you create a public network available to anyone, name it just Daihinia and set it to be an open network with no encryption. This could be done by pressing a button in the Control Application: it will create the network on Vista and later systems and will open the User's Guide on older systems.

Actually, it goes away, but pops up again for each possible Binding Path (read: each adapter, including the virtual and disabled ones) that you have. Just answer "yes" as many times it asks.

The above said applies to XP. Vista and later are a bit smarter and ask only twice - once for each edge (upper and lower) of the driver.

If you experiment a lot with Daihinia, consider disabling the Unsigned Driver warning message.