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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.
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....
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.
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.
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
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.
A war?
Yes, and the last thing freedom fighters need is rampant internet porn distracting them from their work.
"You difficult to fire an M60E with one hand son..."
its a sad day when people no longer know why "multiple hops" between Libya and Crete might be a problem.
IP-over-carrier-pigeon was a classic joke, but it made an interesting point... Internet Protocols don't have to be confined to computers. The exact same protocols can be enacted by people. (Just packet size and latency go up :-)
What you describe is already happening. I've read reports of one guy who's barely slept in a week because he keeps driving back and forth across the border, shuttling hard drives to foreign journalists.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
Beyond the actual communications assistance, I think the effect on morale would be incalculable.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
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.
Not so much the FCC, but the greybeards who will turn you in as soon as looking at you, all the while muttering about how in their day you needed to understand code @500wpm to even look at a radio.
Which is probably one of the reasons they don't have a crazy dictator slaughtering thousands.