Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Could We Reconnect Eastern Libya?
GrumpyBagpuss writes "We all know that the internet is supposed to route around damage, but currently eastern Libya is off the net because all their connectivity goes through Tripoli. How difficult would it to be to reconnect eastern Libya via a microwave link to Crete? It's less than 200km away, on the Libyan end there are mountains up to 850m and on Crete they're higher than 2000m. People have achieved distances of over 300km with simple WiFi equipment, but would it be possible to increase the bandwidth to handle a whole, or at least half a country? How would you connect the link at both ends? What other problems would there be? How many Pringles cans would we need?"
... but I'd gladly give money for any effort in this direction.
A war?
"Until the become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious"
While the Internet played a huge role in relatively developed Egypt, it might be worth pointing out that less than 7% of Libya's population has Internet access, and most of those people are in Tripoli.
While there are surely isolated pockets of connectivity in the Western parts of the country, the usage is minimal and may not actually have a great impact on this revolution.
Just a thought....
Surely you can prioritize bandwidth for something like this. The situation sounds to me like the emergency protocols of amateur radio apply.
All rites reversed 2010
That's a nice question that brings warm fuzzies to my stomach thinking of all the people in Libya we could liberate by giving them internet, unfortunately only 5.1% of the population has internet.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
It's turned into a civil war. It might be better shipping the rebels AK's, anti tank weapons, man portable SAMS and lots of ammunition. Sat phones would be nice for communications but I'm not sure twitter and facebook are really all that important anymore.
Why bother with microwave links, cables, mountains, etc. when you can drop a few hundred satellite modems with wifi. I guess they have satellite dishes already, all they need are a modem and an omnidirectional antenna in each neighborhood.
Ask the communication boys, like AlJazeera.
They KNOW how to move-in a (mobile) satellite uplink (+ downlink) station.
It's easy, really.
You don't even need junked-together tin can wi-fi. Assuming there is something in the air to talk to, you could probably just set up a satellite uplink/downlink and not need to worry about distance or anything. The technology for this is readily available and has been deployed all around the world.
The problem is that the government would probably not like this and is also probably very likely to find it and "deal with it" in the same way that they deal with any other communications channel they don't approve of.
Those Libyans are missing out on a whole load of new Lolcat pictures
Besides electronic jamming and getting shot? Such a link would be an automatic target of the existing regime. Merely pointing their existing military radar arrays at the Libyan internal antennas should be quite sufficient to blanket any high bandwidth signals. And since DEC went out of business, it's hard to find hardware capable of surviving a direct artillery hit.
My company installed the longest microwave link at the time at 108km. This required 15' dishes and used ceragon radios. So you would need two or three hops and some fairly tall towers.
Télécoms sans Frontières already deployed a team to the libyan-tunesian border.
http://www.tsfi.org/en/action/emergencies/147-tsf-deploye-a-la-frontiere-tunisielibye
Consider donating some money: http://www.tsfi.org/en/action/donateonline
In my opinion as of a long time network and internet engineer (+25 years). Satellite based Internet is fastest way if we just got them gear on ground.
http://www.satsig.net/ivsat-europe.htm
It's not that great for all use like voip or interactive shell use because of latency and jitter, but for file transfers uploading and downloading web browsing, email, twitter etc. it is OK.
Given that this is rapidly turning into a civil war by all accounts; installing a large microwave transmitter of any type will probably draw some unwanted attention from the Libyan military.
But heck if someone has the guts to go into Libya and set up that end I'm sure someone out there would be willing to donate the other end just for some good PR.
why not portable cellphone and wifi telescopic antenna towers on trailers that are easily pulled by a pickup truck that can be set up within a few minutes, they can cross the border pull up to a mountaintop and be running in no time. and if they are cheap enough just set one up and abandon it to function until it gets blown up by the enemy, then deploy another one somewhere else, (no life lost) just a couple of thousand dollars in electronics and portable infrastructure for each, if they can be built cheap and disposable like that you can have fleets of them ready to deploy in hot war zones
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Running a cable to Egypt and programming the routers to use it would suffice. Wifi doesn't have the range or bandwidth for the job. This assumes the power grid works- even if Ghaddafi isn't targeting the power it might go out due to fires or lack of gas.
No shit.
This isn't an Ask Slashdot solution. It's a "Ask the companies providing connectivity" solution. No, an individual isn't going to get a 300km wireless link up, unless they happen to have some friends with towers (preferably on mountains), and gear on both ends. Even then you aren't going to make a connection for everyone in the country (even at the low user per citizen number they have). What are they planning? To say "Hey [provider], I established a link. Route everything through my house." Ha.
From TFA:
What's the bandwidth requirement for the whole country? What do the providers on each end have available? What do you mean how to connect both ends, don't you understand routing? Pringles cans, are you fucking kidding me?
With the numbers he gave (200km distance, 1st tower 850m, 2nd tower 2000m), line of sight could be 304km.
He didn't ask the magic questions. Just because you put something up on each mountain, doesn't mean that there's anything to connect to. Power? Fiber/Copper lines? Is there anything in the way? Does it take a wireless bridge on the two sides, and then another pair (or more) to get it to somewhere with service?
I doubt there's a provider anywhere who would let a hobbiest bridge their networks. Oh, did we forget bandwidth fees, port charges, roof rights, etc, etc, etc? Nah, it all must be free, because a hobbiest thinks it's a good idea to do.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
As mentioned its civil war, and there would need to be a lot of coordination and equipment. The curvature of the earth comes into effect when transmitting 300km. This requires repeaters, not to mention you can't just transmit through a mountain. You have to go over (or around) the mountains. There would probably need to be a few satellites involved.
Alabama, the locals have more guns.
It's not just about letting forces communicate and/or let evidence of atrocities leak out.
It's about connecting these people with expectations from government. All that youtubing and facebooking and tweeting gets the word out about how governments of strong successful nations function.
It's the one big thing that *might* prevent these revolutions going down the same shithole most others, from Cuba to Iran to Lebanon to Libya 40 years ago - have gone. Straight into the hands of a just marginally different oppressive, violent and/or otherwise dysfunctional regime.
Continue letting people in there, even a marginal percentage of them, talk with the outside, communicate, let them know where the right paths and the wrong paths from where they are lead, allow them to sidestep the mistakes other emerging nations made and they might stand a chance. Send them weapons and they'll just end up with another four decades and two generations of backwards third world gunk that some irresponsible party instated with these weapons. Guns just don't solve everything.
As a sideinote, Iran is serving a positive purpose, in a grim kind of way:
http://www.despair.com/mis24x30prin.html
-
Get some BIG spools of optic fibre, a plough, and some telco-grade routers. Then just run dozens of cables across the border into the edge towns. Then run the local routers (that all lead to Tripoli and their central telecoms hub) backwards.
Failing that, there's an old Interop saying: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon full of tapes on the freeway."
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
"Should we" is the better question. They are a sovereign nation and wishes should be respected. How you would you feel about a bunch of outsiders pushing their agenda on your fellow citizens, which is exactly what this entails if you boil it down to the basics?
'Internet' isn't a basic human right.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Don't under estimate the bandwidth of physically shipping something like a DVD-R, USB stick, or microSD card in or out of libya. You could traffic these items into and out of the war torn state of your choice. They could contain photos, video, messages etc. Gigabytes of content could sail past any borders. It may take a day or two to reach somewhere with unrestricted internet. But when your hauling dozens of gigabytes it still makes good bandwidth. It just doesn't leave a single point of failure like a large and obvious dish on top of a mountain.
We all know a mertic asston of pirated content moves in schools, offices and around the world this way, all anonymous and untraceable, it undoubtedly dwarfs p2p piracy.
In my mind this is far more practical that daisy chaining wok-fi to get bandwidth into the country which gives obvious targets with which to interfere. Something like a microSD card could be stiched into the clothing of a refugee.
So I'm partly serious when I say you could set up homing pigeon internet - strap microSD cards to their feet. Except of course, they would literally drop packets.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
So you're saying America can singlehandedly save this country by dumping garbage on them?
There is no -1 Disagree.
INTEL sat 11N provides coverage to the area. A 1.2 M dish provides 3.6M downlink 384k uplink the modem is the size of book. If they wanted it, they would already have it.
Haha about temperature differences causing "internal copper" to become damaged. Internal copper, hmm, because Cat5e has external copper sheathing, you say? LOL. No, temperature differences in Libya are irrelevant if you're talking about Cat5e or Cat6.
As for distance -- we're talking about wireless links. You completely missed the point and your post is still rated Insightful? WTF?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Well, thank heavens no one would ever stoop to stereotyping a whole state.
It's probably too late for a new network in Libya.
Sooner or later the US government will weaken and fall as the economy tanks. I expect hyperinflation brought on by mid-east instability wreaking havoc on oil prices.
I recommend everyone get setup with amateur radio license and gear ASAP.
Solar panels or other off-grid power source will be worth major bonus points.
The technology isn't the problem... the problem is the supporters of the current government with weapons that would take out the dishes.
But, one of the problems for the media has been getting news out of Libya. Having a functioning net connection helps a lot in that even if most don't have access to it. You're not limited to satellite phones and portable sat terminals which are expensive and often slow.
Firing a weapon isn't brain surgery, it doesn't take years of practice to do it right. Just give them the gun, tell them where to point the end the bullets come out of and how to put more in, then let 'em go.
There is more to being a soldier than knowing how to fire a gun.
There is something to be said for the rigor of the old-school adventure game or hard-core tactical simulation. When you make a mistake it is "Game Over."
I guess it would be quite cheap that the US navy upgrades some ship to be in front of the coast with strongly directed Antennas to pick up/transmit Wireless (WiMAX, if you like to have an polular standard) signals or provides a directed radio links which can provide infrastructure for mobile cell towers. Probably something like strongly directed GSM network cell would also be possible.
Electronic Warefare Troops can probably do similar things with analog radio since a long time.
However that wold make the participating as much as if they would drop weapons.
Beyond the actual communications assistance, I think the effect on morale would be incalculable.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
But you would be hard pressed to dig up an RPG in Alabama.
If I understand correctly, most protocols allow just about any device to be configured as a node in a peer-to-peer web. WiFi, cell phone ranges, whatever. Would it make sense to build lots and lots of nodes, repeaters if you will, out of old devices like WinCE or Palm OS PDAs with slightly bigger antennae glued on and then wrap them in double-sided tape with big frickin' batteries? Then glue them up anywhere and everywhere so the possessor can't get arrested. Best case scenario: glue one to the underside of a government vehicle like a public bus and just walk away. Or, say, a corporate-owned boat that periodically docks outside Libyan borders.
Connectivity would give a whole new meaning to "spotty" but it would be hella fault-tolerant and an unholy bitch for the regime to track and shut down.
Bonus points for doing a version that works like those flashlights that charge when shaken. Any vehicle on a road in that part of the world should be able to keep batteries charged indefinitely with no trouble at all.
I've spent a lot of time doing communications in remote areas of the world. Your biggest challenge in this case is going to be the other end. You can blast what you want from outside the country, but until you get something actually inside the country to blast back to you, you are pretty much screwed.
Having said that, in a pinch a Pringle can might be enough to get something going, or if you are a fan of the movies, someone who sneaks into the country with a bunch of microwave equipment on their backs. The best approach would be a nice 20 mile space diversity link with 50 ft towers on either end. Let me know how that works out.
The real question is: how long is it going to be before some government police person sees the tower or mast and decides that it might be a good target?
Why are we talking about Eastern fucking Libya on Slashdot again?
your description of the people of Libya applies to Alabama too.
Except I cannot recall the last time I saw Alabama mentioned on Slashdot.
How many Pringles cans would we need?
I don't have any idea, but let me know when you figure it out and I'll help eat the Pringles (just doing my part for world peace)
Or how about to Greece? There's a submarine cable already contracted to connect Libya to Greece. If the contractors already got paid, maybe they should install it.
If you've got line of sight, 2 powerful enough transmitters, and 2 highly directional antennas, it is theoretically possible to do this with microwave transceivers. Laser is theoretically possible too, but it would be even more susceptible to interference from weather. But, wouldn't a single link to the 'net be a pretty attractive target for Gaddafi's jets?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Was that a rhetorical question?
Anyways, Google says he was killed by a Hindu terrorist group:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi
http://pratyushgarg.instablogs.com/entry/why-gandhi-was-assassinated/
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Well ... the discussion was about wireless. The point where I mentioned copper or fiber was from the termination points of the wireless link to the next station (i.e., "last mile").
If something were laid for the whole stretch, I'd bet it would be fiber. 1000baseZX is designed for at least 70KM. So 200KM of fiber, with repeaters every 70KM. Yes, perfectly feasible. So much in fact that telcos already use it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Mountains are precisely where there are lots of connectivity, both electrical and wireless, because thats where transmission towers are located, and typically at the best spots too.
However, it is perfectly possible to do it without such a tower, or beside one. Just make 2 radio links; one from a nearby city, to the mountain, and one from the mountain to Libya. Use a generator to generate power!
That just a few Libyans have internet is an advantage, because there would be less interference, because fewer will be at the focusing spot of a big parabola on the mountain. If a parabola is big enough, it is not necessary with a parabola on the other end. I am not sure how big it has to be yet, but those exist, and can perhaps be lent, or made in a hurry.
I did work 4 years with radio transmission stuff.
[quote]As for distance -- we're talking about wireless links. You completely missed the point and your post is still rated Insightful? WTF?[/quote]
Indeed, when i read his post i could only conclude two things, people still don't RTFA. Second, people with mod-points stopped reading the fucking posts too ...
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
No one over there uses the Internet much. Currently cell phones and more archaic means of communication are being used by the revolutionists. Let them have their win and establish their networking infrastructure as they please in the aftermath. They already have enough bullshit to deal with without "hikers" being shot up for trying to install communication hardware on mountaintops to aid the "enemy", as if that would happen anyway. /. are a bunch of lurkers, not activists. Same goes for the foreign governments with their cries of outrage as they stand by and do jack shit.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
I hope I get these fast and sloppy calculations og parabola size right:
About 300 km distance, and a WiFi can go about 100m, making it necessary with a 3000^2 amplification, which is 140 dB.
The frequency of 2.4 GHz gives a wavelength of about 0.1m, giving a parabolic diameter of 0.1m*3000 = 300m. As big as the Eiffel tower.
However, with some electronic signal amplification, stronger signals, cooling of components, and similar, perhaps this could be decreased to 30m.
Perhaps 3m if there were parabolas at both ends.
Instead of a parabola, one could use diffraction gratings on a 30m big plate, or aluminium foil on a mountain side because this is much easier and cheaper to make.
So I think it is feasible.
At the speed the revolution is moving for the moment, particularly from the east, I think internal comms is more important than external internet access. And, from the film foreign correspondents have broadcast, it looks like the cell network is still up. So, prolly good to go for now.
For the sake of argument, a 200km link is theoretically possible, based on the 125mi link record established during the 2005 Defcon Wi-fi shootout. They were using 10 and 12' satt dishes, and barely managed simple ssh console connections using unamplified wi-fi. With the heights quoted, I'm going to make a wild-ass guess that there isn't going to be sufficient fresnel clearance to prevent significant reflective signal fade over the Med between Cyrenica and Crete. But, with a few watts amplification, who knows?
Luke, help me take this mask off
heh, are you basing that on experience or delusion?
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
By your logic, the nazi's liberated Europe as well. If you add MORE oppression you are NOT a liberator. Two wrongs do not make a right.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That is why a well trained army makes mincemeat out of civilians. So why hasn't the Libyan elite forces make mincemeat out of the rebels? Simple, they are not well trained.
Libya is a country ruled by a leader who knows very well that if an officer gets control over an effective fighting force he can use them to grab power. See his own rise to power. So he has spend a LOT of effort in making sure that the army itself is weak and divided. Even the so called Elite forces are just relatively small units so that any uprising amongst part of them can be squashed by other forces.
War is a lot harder then it looks if you don't just want to get bogged down in ordinary street fighting or slugging matches. It requires an understanding of strategy, tactics and the communication and discipline to be able to direct your troops. Both sides lack it. The kind of fighting you propose is the one practiced in Africa, the one with massive civilian casualties and random butchering. You know the type, that drags on for decades.
There currently is a sort of stalemate. The government forces have the heavy firepower but are to ill trained to use it effectively and perhaps even not willing to go all out, it is their own people after all. They also use mercernary forces which sounds effective but a mercenary wants to collect his pay and black african mercenaries (color matters because Libya's leader has played a very good game of divide and conquer, why do you think there are so many immigrants in a country with record unemployment. And one of his threaths to the west is to open up the gates to Africans wanting to come to Europe, a very powerful threath indeed considering the rise of rightwingers in Europe) are best used against unarmed civilians not armed rebels backed by some military forces.
really, this notion that an AK47 is some kind of wonder weapon belongs in the world of the A-team where pray-and-spray works. In real life, you can carry maybe 3-4 clips and at full-auto you are out of ammo before you can say "man this thing has a kickback". Hitting a moving person who is shooting back is anything but easy. Especially if you are not going to be able to count on your squad covering your back. Why do think armies spend so much time training soldiers? So that when the order is given to do something, everyone does it, knowing everyone else is doing it. Civilians? Scatter at the first sign of trouble and will always be looking for someone else to go in front.
Anyway, supplying the rebels with weapons is interfering and interfering in the Middle East is a minefield. They also got weapons a plenty. Just watch them. All the kids carrying guns. Not ammo mind you, that isn't macho. Just a gun with a single clip... African style civil war. What fun.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Indeed, firing a gun is not that hard. But doing anything effective with it, IS bloody hard. Why do you think soldiers get trained? It isn't about firing the gun. I have been trained decades ago when I still could touch my toes... or even see them and most of the time was NOT spent firing guns.
Far more time was in fact spend on cleaning them. To ensure that when you intend to fire, it does fire. Oh and on discipline so that it only fires when your officer intends you to fire it. And that when you need to, you still got ammo left and not wasted it shooting a 300meter ranged weapon at an enemy a kilometer away. Ammo is always in supply in the movies. In real life combat units have a very small supply with them that is gone in seconds if you do not obey strict fire discipline.
Just play any shooting game and see how much ammo you use. Now calculate the weight. Knees buckling yet? Look at the pictures on the news. How many do you see carrying a weapon vs an ammo crate? Or even carrying a couple of clips with their new weapon?
So what happens if they encounter an enemy? They shoot their single clip and then have to go look for more. It is the chaotic fighting of a African civil war that works best against unarmed civilians. Not a trained soldier backed up by armored vehicles.
Luckily both sides are equally bad at fighting although a long bloody civil war is hardly lucky.
The claymore shows which way to point it? How helpfull. Oh okay, so now you just need to inform EVERYONE else on your side where you deployed it, not accidently have put it on your escape route. Not have a kid walk on it. Put it somewhere the enemy can't just evade it.
Your description of the AK47 is not just stupid, are you actually that silly to think that the bad guys are not going to try to stop you? Do you think a weapon on full automatic is easy to control, what is its effective range?
Really, real war is not a computer game or even a shooting range. Your targets are not there for your enjoyment, they want to kill you. Mostly for being so stupid.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Some hams, technologists, tweeters and bloggers and I are working on a project to build a sustainable network out of existing digital wireless technologies. There are some really cool digital modes that can be run on HF and VHF/UHF radio. Hopefully these types of stories will help drive people to experiment and develop backup plans for email Twitter and other low bandwidth communications over radio. We rely so much on these technologies in our daily lives but we don't have any control over the networks they run on. Check out radiofreenet.org for our nascent community's site and a little more info on the project and building an open alternative for digital free speech for use in a crisis like this.
The more the Western folks are jumping with joy thinking that the Middle East will turn democratic the more silly they have become.
I mean, who is to say the ones toppling those dictators will turn out to be better?
Before you open your mouth, look at Iran.
The Iranians threw out that despicable corrupted king, didn't they?
Look at how "progressive" and "democratic" Iran has become.
The best the First World can do militarily[*] is a no-fly zone, that is, grounding the dictator's main military advantage. Shipping lots of arms can only serve to escalate the war. And who knows, in whose hands those weapons would fall? Remember what happened in Afghanistan when the US was trying to root out the Soviet-sponsored regime? That succeeded marvelously and also gave birth to the Taliban.
I suspect your suggestion comes the the so-called "right to bear arms" that many in the US hold so dear. This doesn't work in all situations, but probably only in those countries or locales where you have a strong middle class. If you're poor and hungry, you tend to think of a gun not just as an instrument for self-defense and national liberation but as a tool to get the necessities you want (food, sex, etc.).
[*]Food and medical aid is probably still the best option.
Which is probably one of the reasons they don't have a crazy dictator slaughtering thousands.
A new republic arising and seeking a fuller participation of its people in its governance.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
A little of both.
I do know some major SIGINT players are aiding Kadaffi, who might have broken the standard ciphers, so I created a Cipher for them. I cannot do much more than this, for personal reasons (job, life etc ). We should educate them not to divulge too many secrets over the radio and the telephone. Tell them about GPRS datacom and crypto.... The cipher: alquarizmi.wordpress.com I suggest to use this cipher in addition to AES, 3DES, RC4 etc.
China does have an efficient civilian and military leadership. They demonstrated what they can do and that they have the guts to kill thousands to preserve their rule. A bit less crude than kadaffi, but still as brutal as necessary. They certainly control finance, which USG apparently is not capable of.
Oh please. If you're going to troll as an AC at least show some skill at it.
He's arguing against putting in communications by saying that due to sovereignty communications shouldn't be put in without the permission of a government that very much doesn't want news coverage.
Noting that he's effectively saying the same thing as Saif is hardly calling him a Nazi.
Using that tired gambit of saying someone called someone a Nazi and therefore their argument is somehow stricken down regardless is bush league.
We built crude, but effective parabolic reflectors using heavy duty Renoyld's aluminum foil. If the rebels have access to that, or just light sheet aluminum, they could build this.
Making it REALLY cheap is a benefit. Ad-hoc is good enough to get things started here.
First, there needs to be a method of getting internet access to the country. There are some crappy options, but good enough to get things started. For example, you can get 2-way satellite access using cheap hardware with 4096 down and 1024 up. That's probably going to cost about $2000 + $2500 a month per uplink and it's money that probably will be thrown away quite quickly as the military will target it. But, let's assume that it's possible to get a few of these up and running and keep them running for a month or two before they're destroyed.
Next, you need a way to distribute the signal. This requires first of all, good performance and second of all good camouflage. For a backbone, the goal is to distribute the signal. This can be done using a configuration of multiple cantennas on top of a wooden post (let's say a few meters high). At the base, there would be a PC with USB adapters for each cantenna running vyatta or a similar router. Using a ARM or ATOM based PC, it should be possible to get the total system power cost to approximately 30 watts or less. With an old car battery or two, there should be enough power to run the devices overnight. The days there are pretty much 12h light, 12 hour dark nearly all year round. So, there would need to be enough solar cells to gather enough power to charge the batteries and operate the system during day time. Finally, the method of signal distribution is in question.
One option is to just use WLAN and leave it up to the users to get close enough to get access. Villiages can use cantennas with wireless repeaters to get the signal closer to their areas. The second is the use of hacked microcells that function as points of presence without the complex billing system. Either way, it has to be using technology which is readily available as opposed to new equipment.
The stations will need to be ordered in a grid of some type, like a large web. OSPF will have to function flawlessly to account for links which failed due to power loss or links that failed due to being destroyed by the government. Problem is, when these stations are found, it will take very little time for the next ones to be found as well. After all, the cantennas would be pointing in the direction of the next station in line.
Using the hackup above, it should be possible to build a base station for $500 or less using commodity equipment. The biggest cost being the solar panels. Someone who knows what they're doing will need to be driving around installing these things quite quickly and monitoring breakages in the network to go out and install new towers regularly to keep things running. So long as the government wants to take the network down, people need to actively be rebuilding, putting up at least 1.5 new links for every link the government removes. Whoever is doing this will very likely be targeted. After all, the easiest way to stop the network from healing itself is to kill off the people building it.
Altogether, I'd say that to get it running up and running, there's probably $100,000 to get started. Figure another $100,000 a month for healing and satellite payments then another $50-$100,000 for growth. This is strictly equipment cost, it does not include the cost of getting the equipment smuggled into Libya, only the cost of building it. The UN, US or any other organization (hell even red cross) could easily spill this kind of money to make this happen without feeling it. What's best is, by establishing this network and teaching the people in Libya how to maintain it, it makes it possible for the people to "westernize" more. This type of a tools is probably more valuable than guns in changing the region. When things eventually stabilize down there (I heard it happened once around 3,750 years ago when Ramses II was Pharaoh, it could happen again for a few weeks), the network would be in place. Then it can be built up and turned into something more professional and even profitable.
I bet the local TLD administration is in Tripoli, so they could direct all DNSs to loyalist sites (or goatse, at their will).