Solar Wi-Fi To Bring Net to Developing Countries 162
JLavezzo writes "TreeHugger.com has an article today on a new wifi development organization: MIT and the UN have teamed up to provide kids living in the world's least developed nations $100 laptops, their 2 watts of juice provided by hand or foot crank. Cool, but - and this was one of Bill Gates' criticisms - what's a computer without internet access? Enter Green Wi-Fi, a non-profit that seeks to provide 'last mile internet access with nothing more than a single broadband internet connection, rooftops and the sun.' Their wi-fi access nodes, which consist of a small solar panel, a heavy-duty battery, and a router, can be linked together to extend one internet connection into a larger network. The two guys who started the company - Bruce Baikie and Marc Pomerleau - happen to be veterans of Sun Microsystems. Deployment is set to start in India at the end of this summer."
Think of the possibilities! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:1)
or maybe get online and find a way to make a solar still (boil water and get it to condense correctly and any water is pure water)
to live well you need to feed
mind ---- we are here
body --- this needs work and some fat punks to be Lion Food
"soul" ---- this is the work of "The Church"
so in your case unless you are planning on loading a C130 with food and flying out yourself* Sit Down and SHADUP
(*or paying somebody to do this)
Cosmology (Score:1)
In my cosmology, I can't find a distinction between mind and soul in the fashion that you do.
Re:Cosmology (Score:2)
Oh, by the way, I think you'd have a stronger comment if you tried it like this:
In my cosmology, I can't find a distinction between mind and soul in the fashion that you do, you insensitive clod!!
Better, don't you think?
Re:Cosmology (Score:2)
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:3, Funny)
P.S. I, and only I, can tell you which Church is the right one, but you'll have to sign up for my newsletter first, before I deem you worthy of such knowledge.
Which church is *the* church (Score:2)
No, you got it wrong.
The fact that each church is contradictory about which is the "saving-one", means only one thing :
there's no way to be safe. The only question that matters is who is going to be eaten first [strtok.net] once the older gods come as the stars predicted.
(And remember : vote for Cthulhu as president [cthulhu.org]).
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
The law of unintended consequences may come into play: electronic communications technologies can erode social/cultural practices that already exist. Is it really an improvement that a few people IM each other the location of a "food drop" (or, more accurately, a food distribution site - though this is not a very common scenario) rather than having a people congregate and discuss it verbally? Wouldn't, perhaps, a kiosk/internet cafe model fit into the use patterns of people in remote villages better?
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
But really, screw the third world - I want that solar-powered mesh-like system here and now! Why's it always the poor who get the gadgets? (OK, really poor taste here, now I'll be in my corner, thanks)
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
OLPC can be seen as an external intervention into local processes, and a fairly top-down driven one, rather than a bottom-up one. I look at these things through the filter of actor-network theory: what are the current boundary objects that people are using to get things done with each other? If you actually think of the laptop as an agent, that actively shapes human practices, what are its effects going to be? There is a long history of well-meaning, failed interventions: distributing free medication and putting local pharmacies out of business, for example, or moving to cash crops that either fail, or have a market collapse (see the history of the Irish potato famine).
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
the flies will come through the tubes! (Score:5, Funny)
Not exactly. The number of flies in each location will stabilize, as the flies travel through the series of tubes that make up the internet. Don't get me wrong: the internet is not a truck. So don't even think that it is.
Re:the flies will come through the tubes! (Score:2)
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:5, Interesting)
I know you think you're being darkly humourous (or maybe just fasionably cynical - it's hard to tell), but there's a bit of truth in what you say.
I work on a project whose aim is very directly pointed at improving communications so that people in rural areas can actually find out just how bad things are in the capital. One of the biggest problems we face here in terms of political reform is the fact that there's absolutely no follow-up, no accountability for elected officials. They buy votes with a few pots and pans and bags of rice, then disappear for four years. But if their villagers actually knew just how much money they were making (and wasting on their cronies), there would be hell to pay.
So if someone with family in the city were to receive news (including, for example, photos of the MP in his fancy new car), it would be a lot harder for him to lie to them the next time around.
It's not a complete solution, by any means. We only need to look at the state of politics in our own so-called developed countries for evidence. But it's a good start, and a vast improvement on the utter lack of communications capacity that most places in the world have to deal with today.
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:5, Interesting)
In the village where he teaches, a year or two back they got hold of a single mobile phone.
There's no electricity in the village. Nor is there mobile-phone coverage. Nevertheless, it has paid for itself a thousand times over.
It goes like this.
They grow and sell various farm-products. They sell most of their stuff on a market 4 hours walk away. It's possible to recharge the mobile-phone at the market. There's a spot with mobile-phone coverage half an hours walk from the village.
End effect ? The villagers know the prices at the market, what is in high demand and what has oversupply so the prices are low. This enables them to make more intelligent choices about what to bring to the market at which times.
End effect ? The market is better supplied. They are better paid.
Knowledge is power.
Re:Think of the possibilities! (Score:2)
Yes, what would citzens of a third world country want with INFRASTRUCTURE!
It's madness I tell you. Next thing they'll be setting up businesses and making money!
They're starving, how could that *possibly* help them.
Re:I was thinking the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Both. Now quit offering these simplistic and narrow-minded false alternatives.
Did it ever occur to you that in order to deliver aid, people might need communications capability? Or that the vast majority of people are not dying of being poor, they're living with it. This means that if they're going to improve their lot - and everyone on the face of this earth has that right - they might need access to information in order to do so?
Talk about childishness (Score:2)
I doubt someone who is suffering from malaria or starving in Somolia is lying there thinking "God, if I only had a laptop". You have to start with basics first. All else is window dressing.
Re:Talk about childishness (Score:2)
Give a man a fish, you feed him one day.
Teach a man to fish, and you give up your monopoly on fisheries.
Are you afraid of giving up your monopoly, or you just don't believe in it
How can they be informed? (Score:2)
We have tried providing people around the world with the basics - and it has worked. The fraction of people living in abject poverty has steadily fallen for the last century. Counter examples exist, almost always due to political instability (which the laptops are not going to end).
Re:I was thinking the same thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Chapter 1: Aids
a. You get Aids from having sex with someone who has AIDS.
b. You can't cure aids by having sex with a baby.
Chapter 2: etc.
Might be worth something
Re:I was thinking the same thing (Score:2)
Re:I was thinking the same thing (Score:2)
In countries where the entire economy and government has failed, education is a much more important charity than food or medicine.
Basic educations might be more helpful (Score:2)
Re:I was thinking the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you propose the family of four get medical care for a year be distributed (and used by the proper recipients)?
You have control of the resources before it reaches TPTB (The Powers That Be). Once it's there, however, all bets are off.
Here's an example:
You see people panhandling for money. Offer to take them in the nearest restaurant. Give management enough money...with the understanding it can only be used for the person in question and anything left over goes in the tip jar. The person you're helping is polite (if you're lucky) but refuses.
Does this mean:
1) They aren't hungry and anticipate having enough the next time he's hungy?
2) you've determined the reason they need the money is to buy some MD2020 (it's a wine -- Mad Dog 20/20 - you're better off to drink battery acid. I cannot imagine a hangover on it. Find some at a cheap-o liquor store try a little, and pitch it - it's an experiment -- not unlike a deep-friend twinkie or Snickers bar at a state fair. I buy whatever is new that year for a one-bite taste by tearing it off, passing the rest off to anyone else wanting a taste. If you are clueless about these deep-fried foods, consider yourself fortunate) or some other booze (or drug)?
3) they need the money for something else - something positive? e.g., sick kid to the clinic?
4) they really rake in the $$$ asking for money and have no reason to find a job.
5) sitting there kills time vs. sitting in the library and doing nothing.
6) ???
You've got the money in hand. How do you decide how it's distributed and how much to give them? (I have a personal pattern|policy, but we won't worry about that right now)
If you hand over the the funds, you have a good chance of believing it will be diverted. That's when the Time photo of Bono means squat. "Forgive the countries which can't pay their debts. It's crippling them trying to keep up." (read that: we're loan sharks) We clear the slate, they have nothing. We give them money, it goes the same place all of the other money has gone. Bono goes oh-fer by asking us to wipe the debts again. Fortunately, none of his money was diverted and he can continue to wear kool-yellow glasses.
If we give them "clean water, a secure food supply, basic medicine, reasonable security...for a year", how do you prevent the hard goods from being sold to another group|country for $$$ or exchanged in some other fashion? Reasonable security? Right now, we're in a bad spot right now [1] -- although we have now have an exit policy [2] and have to intervene in how many other companies using a fleet of UN black helicopters? If it's a UN and not US issue, there's plenty of representation from the countries who are robbing their people blind and have already diverted all of the funds. I hear a One World Order being proposed by someone coming in from the side door.
Lots of fine wishes, but it's not going to happen in the real world. Anyone for a video game? World Conquest & Domination? Wait. Something near to that was in Never Say Never Again.
__________________
[1] A man goes to hell and is greeted by Satan who explains the rules: "I'm going to walk you through a long hallway of rooms. You'll be able to look inside and determine if you want to stay there for eternity [or not]. If you choose to pass but find everything after it is worse, you cannot return. Again, once you pass, you cannot return." They go to the first room and all of the surfaces are so hot people are doing everything they can to avoid contact - jumping off of the floor, wall, taking turns standing on each other, etc. "I'll pass. There's no way I could handle that for eternity." "Fine. But you cannot return if everything else is worse." They go to room #2. Everything must be very cold because the vapor from everyone's breath can be seen in the air and everyone
Sounds good, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds good, but... (Score:2)
It doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing.
Re:Sounds good, but... (Score:1)
Re:Sounds good, but... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds good, but... (Score:2)
It's a Sunny day (Score:2, Interesting)
Didn't someone on the top of Googles command chain come from Sun ?
Sun may produce some seemingly "bloated" stuff, but they damn sure produce some fine people also.
Re:It's a Sunny day (Score:2)
Justice at last!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Justice at last!!! (Score:3, Funny)
have they been to tthe 'least developed nations'? (Score:4, Informative)
They dont even have shoes. These people's most valuable posessions are sticks. I'm not kidding. Sticks are fuel for cookfires. They walk all day with a hundred pound of sticks on their back, with no shoes, no roads.
Now, these people cant read either. Can you not see how pretentious it is to expect them to value a laptop with WiFi when they are starving and can't read?
Get them some shoes first. That will help them a lot more.
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:5, Informative)
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:2)
Here's a hint: the RIAA is in business to make money. Suing poverty-stricken inhabitants of the third world isn't even on their radar.
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the great tragedies of poor countries is that a little knowledge could help them make much better use of their limited resources. If I couldn't afford a pair of shoes, I'd google for information about making some... if I had access to the Net.
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:2)
In traditional societies, crafts such as shoemaking are taught to apprentices willing to dedicate several years to the task.
Your shortcut assumes, in rough order:
That the man without shoes is in good health, with no relevant physical or mental disabilites.
That he has the free time to master a skilled trade. That he is computer-literate.
That the craft can be mastered without hands-on instruction. "They laughed when I sat down at the piano..."
That he can afford the necessary tools and materials.
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:2)
I think that technology can be helpful and integrated well: it's just that the very OLPC model is so wrapped up in a myopic view of culture and society, that I think it is at best destined to fail, at worst could cause more harm than good.
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:1)
Knowlege is power. I want to see shoes on their feet and food in their stomachs too, but an intermediate step - education - could have a much longer lasting and widespread benefit.
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:2)
Solar Cooking (Score:4, Informative)
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:2)
There are places like you describe. Those aren't likely to be the first targets of such projects.
Education is however the only solution. Water. Food. Education. That's about the priority. You can not solve peoples problems for them for ever. You can however help them learn how to solve them themselves. A much much much better use of resources.
Re:have they been to tthe 'least developed nations (Score:2)
Thanks for the info.
We need this here, too. (Score:5, Interesting)
~Rebecca
Re:We need this here, too. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We need this here, too. (Score:2)
(The word "solar" describes so many types of energy, referring specifically to photovoltaic panels helps avoid confusion with things like solar heat. Really, all biomass fuels, including petroleum, started as solar, and wind gets its energy from the sun too.)
Re:We need this here, too. (Score:2)
Re:We need this here, too. (Score:2)
A device like this could make a real industry for solar (photovoltaic, specifically, as another poster points out) cells. Any company which works on these will want the unit to be as small as possible, which means more efficient cells on your rooftop. Competition will drive down prices at the component level, which means cheaper cells going in to those large panels on your roof.
The unit itself is worth it IMO, even to pay a premium for. Anything that can help push solar energy in to the home on a scale bigger than a calculator, can only be good for everyone in the long run.
~Rebecca
Open Source it, Green Wifi !!! just like Ronja! (Score:3, Insightful)
Everybody loves the Ronja [slashdot.org] guy for putting his optical networking designs online....
Re:We need this here, too. (Score:2)
Incidentally, I don't know which blackouts you're talking about, but the instructor of my x86 assembler class works at Sunsweet in Yuba City doing their industrial automation, and part of his job is to constantly monitor a webpage (whose url I do not have right now, sigh) that tells you what the utilization of the California power grid looks like. Right before we were doing rolling blackouts, the capacity never got over 80%. The rolling blackouts were a game, not a necessity. Unless you're talking about some someplace else :)
They give you something like half what you pay them for power, per kWh, and you need both an expensive time-of-use meter and a phase converter for each power unit in order to tie your power generation systems back into the grid. It takes literally years for a solar system to pay for itself in terms of replacing power that you would otherwise be consuming, and that assumes that you're using the power, and thus replacing the grid rate with it for some percentage of your power consumption. If you're selling back the power, rather than using batteries, you don't have to replace batteries every so often, and you can draw on the grid for your overage, but you get a lot less return per kWh of your power, too.
Going for a cure; not treating the sympton (Score:5, Insightful)
The rich nations of the world could divert massive portions of their GDP to feed the impoverished world. Even if you could political find the will to do this, it would solve nothing. Poverty is a symptom of a much larger problem. The core of the problem lies in education. If they can be educated, they can save themselves. Hence, things like cheap Wi-fi while certainly is not a silver bullet, it at least begins to pick away at the problem.
Education is the key. With education and access to information other problems can start be solved. Good democratic governance absolutely demands an education population that is able to vote outside of tribal ties. Educated leaders are need to tackle both social and economic problems, and not just in government, but in business as well. The core of a functional democratic government is an educated population. We can feed the impoverished nations of the world from now until the end of time, but until educated leaders step up they will remain impoverished.
So yes to those that will surely complain about this "waste" of money, these people need food and clean water. Food and water is not the cure though. Education, information, a fiscal boost once good governance is in place are the solution. Throwing money at the worlds poor just to feed them is like pumping blood into a man with a severed artery; the problem isn't that he is running out of blood, the problem is that he has a severed artery.
Re:Going for a cure; not treating the sympton (Score:1)
Won't somebody please think of the children?
Re:Going for a cure; not treating the sympton (Score:1, Insightful)
Now I'm completely out of touch with their song here. When I worked behind the scenes years ago alongside a bunch of salesmen, the mantra was "It isn't selling, it's telling the customer about our stuff so they can choose. If we don't tell them, we're deciding for them." I can understand the viewpoint of "Oh they need the Internet because everyone else has it." but do they really really need it? Especially at school?
In my experience, having more recently worked in IT for a school district, giving kids access to computers was simply a distraction. Like that "Oo, shiny thing!" syndrome. So we started locking down on the access they had. Internet was supervised by teachers for research on class topics only, Word was accessible for writing reports if kids didn't have a PC (or more commonly, had one that only ran Windows 3.1) and there were classes to familiarize them with more of the typical office tools, spreadsheets, etc, particularly in business classes. Email was used some times for kids to turn in homework, but email access was typically restricted to high school (partially because of IT budget restraints at the time.)
There was a structure in place to show kids how to utilize the computer world as a tool. This just sounds like, *flick of a switch* "Here you go! Wireless Internet!" in places that probably would benefit just as well from education through more "traditional" methods.
Or maybe I'm just naive.
Re:Going for a cure; not treating the sympton (Score:1)
Classically the reason these super poor regions are so poor is either lack of resources or people with power come in and exploit the resources. Exceptions exist I'm sure but this is the gist of it as far as I understand.
The best way to help them is help them create a situation in which it becomes worthwhile to invest money in infastructure in said countries. Increasing education levels is a good way to do this.
The reason I'm skeptical though is the question of who gets the education? If India buys a million of these laptops will they use them all over the country or just to educate a select group of people?
What about countries with religous/racial bigotry? Perhaps they'll buy many of the laptops and give them only to people who support the states vision.
I'm not as educated on this as I should be but hasn't this been a problem with food as well? Often when we give out charity in this way some individual in power in these underdeveloping countries will turn around and use it in some twisted way to gain yet more power while doing little to improve the overall good of the country.
The laptops are not a waste I just worry that they will never really be used properly.
No learning, no bread. No bread, no learning. (Score:2)
Keeping people from starving in the several ongoing world disasters is not something we should abandon but that has nothing to do with why portable laptops and networks are good for "developing" nations.
The simple justification for these projects is that it's cheaper education. Dead tree based information is expensive and fragile. Think of the tons of material required for every village to have even a rudimentary library. One leaky roof or arson can take it all away. Now realize how easily that library can be replaced with a few hundred gigs of storage and a good network. Think of how hard it would be to do permanent damage to that kind of system. For much less than the cost of libraries in key cities, a country can make the same information available in an impossible to deny way to all of it's citizens. Collaborative tools, like Wikipedia, are the future of knowledge distribution and not just for those of us rich enough to think of our computers as gaming platforms and superfluous additions to "real" research at a library. Educated people can take care of themselves and that's what the world needs most.
Re:Going for a cure; not treating the sympton (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I consider the whole "good governance" mantra a cop-out. Yes, there are many corrupt countries to point to. But even the countries with good leadership are hamstrung by payments on old debts and irrational demands by the IMF. Too often, the cycle goes like this: the old regime is thrown out, replaced by someone who wants to make life better for a country. But to do that, they need money, because a government without money is just a bunch of people sitting around wearing poofy wigs. The IMF offers them a loan, which they really can't afford to pass up. But in order to get the loan, the IMF demands that they do things that will lead them to the Holy Grail of Economic Development: capital investment. The measures for attracting investment are simple, yet cruel: balance their budgets, privatize state-run institutions, and remove any restrictions on the flow of goods and capital into their country.
Balancing the budget means cutting back on expensive programs that provide for the poor, the elderly, and the unemployed. Liberalized trade means that while people get cheaper goods, the gain comes at the cost of jobs, as the market wrings out the "inefficient" producers. Liberalized capital controls means that investment money pours into the country when times are good (causing inflation), and flees at the first sign of trouble. The newly privatized industries have meanwhile fallen into the hands of foreign investors, who frankly don't care if the industries are serving the needs of the country, so long as they're delivering 22% a year.
The people look at the massive unemployment and the piecemeal sale of their country to foreigners, and they don't see good governance. Quite the opposite. So they throw the bums out, and the IMF just shakes its head and mutters about how sad it is that so many countries have such a shortage of good leadership.
Compare those outcomes with the Asian economies, which are growing rapidly while steadfastly ignoring the IMF's advice and rejecting their loans.
Re:Going for a cure; not treating the sympton (Score:2)
From my limited experience growing up in the Phillipines this is actually a real problem. Outside of the capital city, Manila, the governments to almost nothing. Even the ambulances are just used to drive officials who don't want to have to wait in traffic. The last president, Joseph Estrada, was an ex-movie actor who made Bush Jr. look like Einstine. I remember watching this dialogue in the morning news one day:
News Reportor: Sir, what's your favourite colour?
Estrada: Fushia.
News Reportor: Uhh, how do you spell that?
Estrada: r-i-d.
in the end they found out he was stealling all sorts of money, then the people had a coup and finally got him out of there. Fortunatly the current president, GMA, is a pretty sensible lady.
The underlying problem here is the lack of eduaction that pervades the country. The whole Estrada debacle was a pretty obvious sign of that. A million cheap laptops with internet connectons is just what is needed. Once the public is somewhat informed about things they can demand politicians with some degree of intelligence.
Re:Going for a cure; not treating the sympton (Score:2)
An educated and informed populace can go a long way toward holding their government accountable. I hope The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer... I mean, The One Laptop Per Child Project can help make that happen.
Re:Going for a cure; not treating the sympton (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that this might just work along those lines as well.
Hindenberg (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone involved in a wi-fi WISP (Score:4, Insightful)
I was talking to someone who has also deployed wi-fi just the other day. His honest opinion of his equipment was that the companies selling wi-fi seem to be more interested in selling a lot of equipment than they were in spending the time to develop solid equipment that actually worked and worked solidly.
Of course, I smell MESH networks, and nothing sounds cooler than a wireless MESH network...but in my experience, there is also a lot hype there that also falls flat when you actually try and deploy it.
Of course, some of our problems have resulted in some crappy boards we were sold, but even if they were working 100%, I'm still less than impressed with wi-fi on a large scale like that.
Transporter_ii
Our inside joke about wireless internet (Score:1)
Wifi is the wrong tool for the job. (Score:5, Interesting)
What's interesting is that the Ricochet [wikispaces.com] network has already been designed, deployed, proven, mismarketed, and abandoned. Metricom's routing protocol was vastly superior to anything else in this space, and now YDI's got the patents locked up.
Airespace was founded by a bunch of ex-Metricom brains, and it looks like they built many of the same smarts into the same [cisco.com] casing [wikispaces.com]. Then Airespace got bought by Cisco and they call it the 1500. I wouldn't mind playing with a few dozen of these.
Anyway, if someone could convince YDI to open the intellectual property, that warehouse full of Ricochet poletops could be deployed anywhere in the world. The modems are cheap, the hardware is bulletproof, and did I mention they go a mile on the stock rubber ducks?
Re:Wifi is the wrong tool for the job. (Score:2)
Re:Wifi is the wrong tool for the job. (Score:2)
Actually, if you dig up the earliest docs on the Internet (ARPAnet), you'll find a lot of drawings of the intended use of the system. Most of them were totally wireless.
Remember that the ARPAnet was a military project. The intent was electronic communication in battlefield conditions. You can't run wires between your tanks, planes, ships, and troops.
More to the point, the suposedly-new "mesh" idea is just a rebranding of the original design. It was expected that people would not only be cutting your wires, but they'd also be bombing your communication hubs. The packet-routing system was expected to be dynamic, so that as routers died or came online, the routine software would reroute packets automatically.
This is a pretty good model for a flock of OLPC gadgets, any of which may run out of power or be shut down when someone eats dinner, goes to bed, etc. The original intent was that as long as a path exists between two machines, the routing software will find the path and deliver the packets. And this isn't a new idea; it was the intent back in the 1960s.
It would be interesting and amusing if a bunch of wild-eyed academics could once again implement a military design to provide a useful resource for a large part of the world when the commercial world believes it isn't worth doing. The commercial Internet does think that wi-fi is a feeble technology, good only for the last few meters. And they don't like customer-owned networks. So we can't trust the commercial world to solve the comm problems outside major urban areas. It will have to be done by people who have a motive other than commercial profit.
Re:Wifi is the wrong tool for the job. (Score:2)
Did you think you were contradicting me? Yes, the internet can function with lots of wireless links. I'm simply saying that the low-level radio layer, known specifically as wifi, eight oh two dot eleven, isn't suitable because it has problems with fairness, channel sharing, mac spoofing, and acks. Your point is akin to saying that the internet can work over symmetric links, and IrDA is symmetric, therefore the internet should be all IrDA.
No. There are lots of radio protocols that would make a fine mesh network. Wifi isn't among them. By the time you've grafted enough patches and tweaks onto 802.11 to make it useful in a mesh, it barely resembles the original spec. Efforts to do so are colossal wastes of time, but they tend to achieve some measure of success simply because the media goes gaga over the word "wifi", whereas technically sensible projects who reject 802.11's absurd baggage don't tend to get the same amount of fawning press.
Slashdot is part of the problem, unfortunately. Anyone doing radio data work with something other than wifi is slapped with the ugly "proprietary" label, even when a fresh approach is exactly what's needed. Imagine if the Honda fanboy websites bitched every time a Caterpillar bulldozer was used in place of a Civic. Who cares if hatchbacks don't make good bulldozers? It's not our favorite!
Re:Wifi is the wrong tool for the job. (Score:2)
Most WISPs are run by dummies. (Score:3, Informative)
Whats you solution then? WiFi's the best we got! (Score:2)
Currently WiFi is the best technology we got for broadband internet access in remote regions. It is the only mass-produced high-bandwidth wireless standard around. And of course any mass-produced complex consumer grade electronics will have a low MTBF. But you have to pick and choose your hardware carefully whatever your project is and plan your maintenance strategy accordingly.
Seems like you've had trouble with 'MESH networks'. MESH network is just a concept - you need to make an efford and have the engineering skills to apply it in reality. And quit whining about FCC limitations on channels and powerlevels. You have to plan around those. For example having multiple radio-interfaces in one accesspoint/router with sector antennas for clients and line-of-sight antennas for trunking will give you managable and predictable performance.
I would start with something like Soekris [soekris.com] embedded-linux board with mPCI/PC-card radio-interfaces and custom antennas for each purpose. One radio acts as the accesspoint with omni-antenna and other two are used for trunking with parabolic antennas. That'll give you a basic building block for your network. Then you just loop them around the area you need coverage for and at junctions and high-traffic areas you co-locate a couple hooked together via the eth0 - its all flexible and managable with linux running on the boxes. This wont exactly be a 'MESH-network' (more like a semi-hierarchical mobile-phone tower network) but it will have the same flexibility of coverage and reliability (because of the looping).
You have a better idea?
OT: Tech stuff is all well and good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule of law and basic economic freedom seem to provide the best means out of poverty, every time it is implemented, and roads might help that effort along.
I know building the Interstate Highway system in the USA seems to have done wonders in a country that was doing well anyhow, but how about it? Aren't roads high tech enough to be sexy?
After all, how do you deliver X (medicine, water purifiers, food, laptops and WiFi set-ups) without roads?
On the other hand, the cynical side of me thinks... if you put solar powered anything that might have any other use... it will get stolen.
Maybe you really do need "rule of law" first.
Re:OT: Tech stuff is all well and good... (Score:2)
Not if they're aren't any roads for the thief to get away
Re:OT: Tech stuff is all well and good... (Score:1)
Construction of a robust transportation system assumes that you have machinery and expertise, both of which would be in very short supply in a developing country. The only way out of a situation like that, and I mean the ONLY way, is education. You can't plop an industrial foundation into place overnight - you have to educate people as to what is possible, and let them build their own.
Even "rule of law" presupposes a certain level of literacy - how are you going to codify and distribute your laws if noone can read them? In this case the solution lies with people, not technology. It's better to have a trained doctor in a village who has the bare supplies he needs to function rather than boxes of powerful antibiotics that noone knows how to use.
Sorry... forgot to suggest Mr. Gates's Money (Score:2)
And by "roads", I do mean literally roads, but also any other infrastructure that we westerners might overlook as "obvious". How about some more phone lines, etc.
Maybe assasinate a few warlords on the sly, while you are at it. You know, basic stuff.
Re:Sorry... forgot to suggest Mr. Gates's Money (Score:3, Interesting)
You're absolutely right about basic infrastructure. Transport and communications are integral to a viable economy. This, by the way, is exactly why we need tools like solar powered wireless - to bootstrap communications in areas where 'proper' infrastructure of the kind you see in North America or western Europe is just plain impossible.
You'll be glad to know, by the way, that the US is devoting USD 68 million to the country where I work to do exactly that. It's building roads, airstrips and wharfs. By all accounts, it's one of the best-run development projects this country has seen since colonial times.
Re:OT: Tech stuff is all well and good... (Score:2)
The bottom line is that there's no simple bottom line. It takes a constant cycle of capital and education in order to grow an economy. You're more than welcome to debate how the capital should be spent and how the education should be accomplished, but it's useless to debate which should come first.
As a side note, please remember that rudimentary roads can be built without heavy machinery. I'm sure there's no shortage of labor in these countries.
Re:OT: Tech stuff is all well and good... (Score:2)
Trains. Ships. etc.
Most countries don't have the same love affair Americans do, with cars.
And in some places, like the Australian outback, the huge truck-trains go over primitive dirt roads constantly.
The interstate system was important in the US because cars were primitive at the time. Their skinny wooden wheels couldn't handle soft dirt or mud.
The problems of other countries can't be solved by just blindly duplicating the development of the USA.
Re:OT: Tech stuff is all well and good... (Score:2)
The interstate system was a project of the 1950's. Inflatable rubber tires were commonplace back then.
Re:OT: Tech stuff is all well and good... (Score:2)
Isnt going to help (Score:1, Insightful)
But India isn't doing OLPC! (Score:2)
Free WiFi and Diamonds and Water in the Desert (Score:3, Interesting)
An illterate family is dying of hunger somewhere in a Africa. Someone offers them a loaf of bread to melt down their free solar powered wi-fi station and latop as scrap metal. They gladly trade.
That's the problem in these places where people are starving and illiterate. Any kind of infrastructure you put in is just going to be sold as scrap for food. This might not be the case in India, where people aren't starving to death and are not totally uneducated, but this kind of thing has happened over and over again in Africa. People put in an elaborate desert irrigation system to grow food and all the pipe fittings are stolen and sold as scrap metal.
Re:Free WiFi and Diamonds and Water in the Desert (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Free WiFi and Diamonds and Water in the Desert (Score:2)
steve
Re:Free WiFi and Diamonds and Water in the Desert (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free WiFi and Diamonds and Water in the Desert (Score:2)
Ah. So India = slightly educated and well fed and Africa = everyone starving.
Thank you for expanding my incredibly narrow world view.
Satellite (Score:2)
Ever heard of Satellite Broadband [fcc.gov]? It's not as fast as fiber optic cabling but it works in remote areas.
Re:Satellite (Score:2)
Just imagine Communication towers with Wifi, Cellphone and Satellite services in the middle of poor neighborhoods. And they are powered by Solar Power.
Sneakernet (Score:2)
uh... FOOD? (Score:2)
Re:uh... FOOD? (Score:2)
What about people who aren't starving, but still have no useful skills or are embargoed out of the global market by wealthier countries? What are they supposed to do? Sorry, you're not going to get any help, because there are needier people than you who we need to give a hand out to.
Great idea (Score:2)
Need to change the nature of the Internet for Mesh (Score:2)
Anything that your neighbor has pulled down from anywhere, or which has been forwarded through that system, should be cached for nearby users to get without going dozens of hops. This will be complicated by self-healing/dynamic routing of the mesh (i.e. content may be pulled down via different routes - splitting individual files).
Combine that with a common portal that everyone goes to first, to increase the hit rate on the cached information that many in an area use.
Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
So, I tend to like seeing these "brick-and-mortar"--and workable--solutions actually come to market.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:So (Score:2)
Re:Once Spain gets more reliable power, WiFi there (Score:1)
Spain may be better or worse as far as the grid is concerned, but I'm pretty sure they have a similar (or more favorable) solar index...