[wsfii-discuss] What content might help one set up a wi-fi network?

Sat Aug 25 22:43:04 UTC 2007

Hello Andrius !  :-)

If you like you are very welcome to put some contributions from the 
Danish DjurslandS.net experience on the flash drives.

It could surely be a great inspiration in Africa to be informed on how 
we succeeded to establish an extremly cheap full surface covering 
wireles landscapenet on Djursland, a Danish rural peninsula of 50 km * 
60 km. To day we have about 300 antenna amplified main nodes and 6000 
antenna amplified local installations at housholds, institutions anf 
firms - which each can reach a main node at distances up to 5 km - 
giving about 20000 rural individuals broadband access to the Internet - 
and forming a rural e-community here with all it benefits for the rural 
population. The cost of establishing and running Internet access in 
rural areas through wireless landscapenet the Djursland way - 4 megabit 
both down and up -, is, all expenses considered over 4 years, only 1/3 
of the average expenses that households have to pay in the Danish 
cities, for similar cabled-based service. As distances in rural areas is 
bigger and population to share expenses is much smaller, the expectation 
is that expenses would be much higher than in cities . . . The Djursland 
model is "a way to go" not only for rural areas around the globe, but 
for all of Africa and other places with a relatively weak economy.

The Computer-Support-community on Djursland who started this huge area 
landscapenet hosted the Freifunk.net Summer Convention 2004 on 
Djursland, where about 200 net-nerds participated from 36 countries 
around the World. That convention both gave birth to the WSFII (World 
Summits on Free Information Infrastructures) and to the DIIRWB 
(Djursland International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband).

You can find my report and presentation from DIIRWB to the "VII 
Infopoverty World Conference" in the UN Headquarter in New York, April 
19 and 20 2007, here:
http://hos.nr-djurs.net/bjarke/DIIRWB-presentation_final-2.pdf
(I was an invited panelist in a panel on "Broadband Satellite Platform 
for E-services and Integrated Terrestrial Infrastructures" and the 
conference was taking place at 6 video connected localities around the 
World).

You find my indepht report on lessons learned from the DjurslandS.net 
experience, 52 illustrated pages, delivered March 6, 2007, to InfoDev, 
commissioned by the World Bank, here:
http://hos.nr-djurs.net/bjarke/In-Depht_Study_of_the_DjurslandS_net_experience.pdf
(In a global survey to find role-models InfoDev found about 30 
interesting networks and asked 7 of them to give an indepht report on 
their lessons learned. DjurslandS.net were together with Wireless Ghana 
and Nepal Wireless the 3 non-commercial networks of the 7, and all the 3 
are involved in the WSFII).

FYI:
DIIRWB and DjurslandS.net contributed to the recent workshop in Winneba 
in Ghana with 56 presend recycled accesspoints and material for 
production of a similar amount of biquad antennas, and also the needed 
differnet tools, and the staff of DIIRWB gave during the workshop 
program online video-lectures to the workshop participants and provided 
them with know-how material on a special workshop-server. Also special 
online support was provided every day during the workshop period between 
8 AM until 6 PM. - We believe that training of local netbuilders can be 
provided this way, and we want to explore and develop how far we can go. 
The essential prerequisites will be 1) A trustworthy local contact 
person who wants to build a peoples network, 2) One Internet access, and 
3) Forwarded equipment.

Kind regards
Bjarke Nielsen
Founder at DjurslandS.net
Educationalleader at DIIRWB.net
http://DIIRWB.net and http://Landscapenet.org

Andrius Kulikauskas skrev:
> Gerard Mourits wrote:
>
> Gerard,
>
> Thank you for replying.  Though I will dare to say, given the noble 
> purpose of this list, if you were from Africa and you got such a 
> response...  would you ask twice?  But I'll give you a second chance if 
> you like...!
>
> Jeff, great answer - that's extremely helpful and will give us a start 
> with wi-fi.
>
> Trying to be more specific, I'm still looking for any good tutorials, in 
> the Public Domain or a version of copyleft that allows for commercial 
> use, for:
> * assembling computers from parts
> * computer basics
> * HTML basics
>
> Thank you!
>
> Andrius
>
>   
>> On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 01:15:46 +0300, "Andrius Kulikauskas" <ms at ms.lt>
>> said:
>>   
>>     
>>> I want to ask, What content might we put on flash drives and distribute 
>>> in Africa that would be useful for people who want to try to set up 
>>> their wi-fi network?  In particular, we're working with Samwel Kongere 
>>> in rural Kenya to build a local wi-fi network there.  Andrius 
>>> Kulikauskas, ms at ms.lt
>>>
>>>
>>>     
>>>       
>> Simple question many answers..
>> Like the fairy tail said: If you don't know where you're going any
>> direction will do.
>> There is so much software etc. free on the Internet that you have to go
>> up to the people where you're sending it.
>> Ask them what they need. And remember that there is a huge gap between
>> those who have access to the Internet and to those who don't.
>>
>> Gerard
>>
>>
>>   
>>     
>>> ---------------------------------------
>>>
>>> I have purchased a dozen USB flash drives to send to our participants in 
>>> Africa (and potentially to other places with marginal Internet access, 
>>> please speak up!)  My purpose is to understand how much they might be 
>>> sold for and what they might be used for.  Here in Lithuania I can buy 
>>> 256 MB flash drives for $9 and 512 MB flashdrives for $11.  And we have 
>>> an opportunity to buy 300 flash drives for about $5 each directly from 
>>> Shenzhen, China.  Whereas in many places in Africa the cheapest flash 
>>> drives sell for $30.  So we want to practice selling them and learn more 
>>> about the market and the capability of our network.  This is also a step 
>>> towards organizing the manufacture of a device for displaying the 
>>> contents of a flash drive and editing them with a standard keyboard.
>>>
>>> Furthermore, this is an opportunity to publish content which might be 
>>> shared in Africa.  What do we suggest we put on these flash drives?  
>>> They should include a combination of our own concerns and those of our 
>>> African participants.   Here is what we have considered so far:
>>> http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?FlashDriveContent
>>> Thank you to Sasha Mrkailo for helping!
>>>
>>> I will make a CD-ROM and distribute that and portions can be put on the 
>>> flash drives.
>>>
>>> We will certainly have available the activity of our lab:
>>> - Our email archive, about 20,000 letters and 200 MB.
>>> - Our wiki, http://www.worknets.org, about 3,500 pages and 100 MB.
>>> - Our chat transcripts, http://www.worknets.org/archive/, less than 3 MB
>>> - Our food stories http://www.myfoodstory.info 5 MB text plus photos
>>> - Our videos, or at least some of them!
>>>
>>> Note that the materials need to be in the Public Domain or encourage 
>>> sharing.  Among the copyleft licenses, for the purpose of distributing 
>>> content, the GNU FDL license (used by Wikipedia) and the Creative 
>>> Commons "attribution" licenses are fine.  The Creative Commons 
>>> "noncommercial" and "share alike" licenses are not.  Unfortunately, we 
>>> can't use many good sites because of copyright restrictions.
>>>
>>> Our African participants Samwel Kongere, Fred Kayiwa, Helen Mahoo, 
>>> Josephat Ndibalema, David Mutua, Wendi Losha Bernadette, William Wambura 
>>> have endeavors that I think reflect their interests:
>>> http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Endeavors
>>>
>>> * Health: AIDS, Malaria, Community clinic
>>> * ICT: Assembling computers, Internet, InternetCafe, Video, Websites,
>>> WiFi
>>> * Economics:  Aid, BottomUp economy
>>> * Rightful living: Brickmaking, KnowledgeWork, Shoes, Crafts
>>> * Inclusion: Deaf, Orphans, Refugees, Street Children, Women, East 
>>> Africa regional network
>>> * Education: Literacy, ICT for Education
>>> * Agriculture: Integrative Farming, Poultry, Beekeeping, Urban
>>> Agriculture
>>> * RuralUrban: Kibera, Neighborhoods
>>> * Local languages: Kiswahili
>>> * Values: Motivation, Selfishness, Sports
>>>
>>> We should also share materials that reflect our own interests including:
>>> * Appropriate technology
>>> * Community currency
>>> * Global villages
>>> * Architecture
>>> * Renewable energy
>>> * Flu pandemic
>>> * Solaroof
>>> * EcoBnB
>>> * Nonviolence
>>> * Loving God
>>> This will help us engage each other.
>>>
>>> Below are some resources that we have so far.  Please add your ideas!  I 
>>> especially would like to include more works on:
>>> * Health
>>> * Appropriate technology
>>> * Textbooks for children
>>> * Local languages
>>> * Agriculture
>>> * Computer tutorials for hardware (assembling computers, setting up 
>>> wifi) and software (using computers, making websites, simple programming)
>>>
>>> Thank you!  I will send out the flash drives some time next week, and 
>>> then we'll keep adding to our collection.  If you know of any 
>>> collections so far that's a great help.  I was a bit surprised that One 
>>> Laptop Per Child doesn't have any collection yet, they are just 
>>> organizing themselves, I think.
>>>
>>> Andrius
>>>
>>> Andrius Kulikauskas
>>> Minciu Sodas
>>> http://www.ms.lt
>>> ms at ms.lt
>>> +370 699 30003
>>> Vilnius, Lithuania
>>>
>>> http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?FlashDriveContent
>>>
>>>     *  Wikipedia or parts of it
>>>     * Bible (Public Domain), New Testament (Luo), New Testament
>>>     (Kiswahili)
>>>     * Quran in Arabic, English (which text?)
>>>     * Other scriptures, classics
>>>     * http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
>>>
>>> also there is a CD for download with the most recommended books, lots of 
>>> classics there. Textbooks
>>>
>>>     * Mit Open Course Ware
>>>           o Democratization in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Fall 2001
>>>           o 21A.460J / SP.620J Medicine, Religion and Politics in Africa 
>>> and the African Diaspora, Spring 2005
>>>           o AIDS and Poverty in Africa, Spring 2005
>>>           o Information and Communication Technology in Africa, Spring
>>>           2006
>>>           o 21M.293 Music of Africa, Fall 2005
>>>           o 12.453 Crosby Lectures in Geology: History of Africa, Fall
>>>           2005
>>>
>>> Languages
>>>
>>> Kiswahili
>>>
>>> Lou
>>>
>>> Luganda
>>>
>>> MinciuSodas Archives
>>>
>>>     * Letters - at least 178 MB for about 15000 letters, per day about 
>>> 20 letters =
>>>     * Wiki - 267 MB for 3500 pages (including all changes) for 3500 
>>> pages, per day about
>>>     * Chat transcripts -
>>>     * Food stories - 2000 stories
>>>
>>> Programming Manuals
>>>
>>>     * PHP
>>>     * Perl
>>>
>>> Pictures
>>>
>>> Sound
>>>
>>>     * Public Domain Audio Books
>>>           o The Federalist Papers
>>>     * Interviews
>>>     * Gospels spoken in various languages
>>>
>>> Video
>>>
>>>  From SamwelKongere, KennedyOwino, ...
>>>
>>> Software
>>>
>>>     * Gimp - (possible moneymaker)
>>>     * other FOSS software
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> wsfii-discuss at lists.okfn.org
>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/wsfii-discuss
>>>     
>>>       
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