Icarus Nodes

NITlab has developed powerful Wi-Fi nodes, called ICARUS, in order to support the increasing demand of state-of-the-art resources for experimentation in NITOS facility. Experimenters are able to run and evaluate demanding processing algorithms and protocols in a large scale testbed. Icarus nodes are equipped with 802.11a/b/g and 802.11a/b/g/n wireless interfaces and feature new generation intel 4-core cpu's and new generation solid state drives.

You can find in the following table, some indicative specifications for the Icarus nodes. These could be altered according to the specific needs of each deployment.

Specifications:

To control and monitor Icarus node's operation we use NITlab's Chassis Manager Card (CM card). A tiny web server is running on the CM card and serves http requests such as power on/off and reset commands. Further more, CM card can support real time sensor measures, since it can be connected with temperature & humidity sensor, as well as with a light sensor.

Three leds on the frontage are used to indicate the operational status of the Icarus nodes. More specifically the blue led indicates that the node is powered on, the red led is flashing when the cm card serves a request and the white led indicates that the node operates on running mode.

Our new node's name and logo, Icarus,  are coming from Greek mythology and symbolize a human with flying skills.

Diskless Nodes

The basic characteristic of those new nodes is the lack of a local disk. Furthemore, their price is significantly lower than the Orbit nodes due to their hardware specifications. Sometimes, we may refer to those diskless nodes as Low Cost Nodes (LCN).

The LCN are [ alix2.c2 ] system boards of [ PC Engines ] company equipped with:

• CPU: 500 MHz AMD Geode LX800
• DRAM: 256 MB DDR DRAM
• Storage: Compact Flash socket
• Power: DC jack or passive POE, min. 7V to max. 20V
• Three front panel LEDs, pushbutton
• Expansion: 2 mini PCI slots, LPC bus
• Connectivity: 2 Ethernet channels (Via VT6105M 10/100)
• I/O: DB9 serial port, dual USB port

An alix2.c2 board bundled with two Atheros cards and connected to a Splitter of PoE	Diskless Node 1	Diskless Node 2

A Splitter of Power over Ethernet

Orbit like Nodes

Orbit nodes are actually PC's equipped with :

• 1 GHz VIA C3 proccessor
• 512 MB of RAM
• 40 GB disk
• two ethernet ports
• two 802.11 a/b/g cards
• a Chassis Manager
  • is a PCI connecting control board, that has been designed specifically for the VIA MB770 mainboard. This board is powered up by standby power, and has its own Ethernet NIC to receive power control commands.

   

Orbit Node Schematic

Orbit Node