[wsfii-discuss] the cooperative way for India?

Thu Jul 6 18:46:31 UTC 2006

I do agree in almost everything, just to comment about local community 
ability to scale and avoid network collapse.

In our region we learned a few lessons that drove us to the path of 
building guifi.net in a pan-community approach.

Some of our conclusions were:
-A local community that just relies with the ability and availability of 
a few networks admins can run a network of just about a few dozens of 
routers
-By having some utilities, such as a database, wiki ant network console 
(cacti, nagios....), it can be up to a hundred interconnected nodes?
-By building a database automatic IP provisioning system, maps, forums, 
built-in online network monitoring, configuration tools etc... that 
could bring us up to thousands?

Wireless community is not just about socializing, wifi state-of-the-art 
technology is a huge challenge and it isn't at the hand of a few 
volunteers. There are never excedent on volunteers.

Major problem I do envision now here is uniformity. Local communities 
are plural and self-centered (they should be, that is the basis). No way 
to share anything if there are no common practices. So what we can share?

There have to be a motivation for sharing not only experiences, also 
resources. How many of us are really sharing resources across 
communities? But might be different approaches for solving technology 
problems (i.e. routing, hardware...) so.... what?

What about at least having the ability to syndicate community networks 
by describing them in XML? So regardless of how you do run a given 
network, you still are able to see others, if someone finds out a good 
hardware configuration tool solution, by providing your network 
information to it you are just able to take advantage of it without 
disrupting other features that maybe you have and love...

Ramon.

En/na Ken DiPietro ha escrit:

> Vickram (et al)
>
> I find this thread fascinating from a couple of different standpoints. 
> First and foremost is the dynamic we are discussing between, 
> government, private business and local communities. I applaud you 
> being able to clearly and concisely explain some of the reasons each 
> component of this structure is not capable of managing this work on 
> it's own.
>
> If that is the case, I would suggest that each one of these segments 
> must take responsibility for a piece of the job and this is how I 
> would suggest one possible solution could be implemented.
>
> Government -  The national government in partnership with local 
> governments create a training facility to educate a staff of young, 
> resilient workers capable of deploying this equipment even under the 
> most adverse local conditions. Additionally, government either 
> mandates the manufacture of this equipment at a subsidized price or 
> provides tax incentives to make the manufacturers of this equipment 
> eager to produce it. From what I can tell, the government will also 
> have to remove the mountains of red tape that it seems to thrive on to 
> make this project go forward as well as removing any tariffs that 
> might also add to the cost of this equipment.
>
> Business - Private sector must be motivated to build this equipment. I 
> would suggest that this could be done by using a combination of tax 
> incentives weighed against the threat of allowing the importation of 
> goods should the local businesses not meet the demand in a reasonable 
> time period. Specifications for interoperability as well as 
> environmental hardening need to be mandated. Another possibility would 
> be for the government to subsidize the training of qualified employees 
> to manufacture this equipment.
>
> Local communities - This is where the demand is generated. One of the 
> ways these communities can pay for this connectivity is to supply 
> labor to the manufacturers as well as to the installation staff. These 
> trained people could return to their communities to keep the network 
> operational after a set period of time and it would be up to the 
> community as well as government to pay for the workers (or a portion 
> of their salary/expenses) during this time.
>
> Please note - many of these communities will be able to work together 
> as this connectivity will be supplied by passing through one community 
> on the way to delivering to another community further down the line. 
> It will be critical that these groups can work together or the segment 
> of the network will eventually collapse.
>
> I realize this outline is full of holes and is not intended to be a 
> boilerplate for how this project should be rolled out but rather a 
> staring point for discussion.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Ken DiPietro
>
> New-ISP.net/NextGenCommunications.net
> Wireless solutions - not concessions.
> http://www.nextgencommunications.net
> 1044 National Highway LaVale MD 21502
> Tel# (301)789-2968 Cell (301)268-1154
>
>
> vvcrishna at radiophony.com wrote:
>
>> Quoting Balaji G <balaji_g1947 at yahoo.com>:
>>
>>  
>>
>>> What should these mechanisms be ? I have my doubts on the scaling of
>>> community based approaches, but one must develop the area further, 
>>> as well
>>> as explore other mechanisms.  Hope is in strenghtening the energies of
>>> communities as against burdening them with another development task, 
>>> which
>>> is easier done by Government and moneyed industry.     
>>
>>
>> Community based approaches, on the contrary, are probably the most 
>> powerful in
>> terms of scaling. Half the reason that mobile networks in rural areas 
>> are so
>> pathetic as that no urban executive wants to go spend months in the 
>> boondocks
>> wrangling with ticklish local issues of electricity, workers, spares, 
>> drinking
>> water, food etc.
>> That critical problem is erased when the work is community-driven. But
>> unfortunately, decades (centuries) of autocratic rule has damped down 
>> the
>> desire of most rural Indian groups to do things for themselves, which 
>> is why
>> the most genuinely successful ICT projects are in places where a 
>> significant
>> amount of preparatory work has been done, sometimes for years.
>> Depressing, perhaps, but no reason to lose hope or abandon this 
>> country's fate
>> solely to 'big' governments and (essentially greedy) private 
>> businesses to come
>> to the rescue.
>> Vickram
>>
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>>
>>
>>   
>
>
>