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Afghans Build Open Source Internet From Trash
An anonymous reader writes "Residents of Jalalabad have built the FabFi network: an open-source system that uses common building materials and off-the-shelf electronics to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of up to several miles."
For the win. P2P win, that is.
proud caffeine whore
I'd have thought there would be well paid contractors over there doing that with expensive, subscription based routing equipment. :P
This is the reason I'm proud to call myself a geek. This is why I contribute to groups like EFF. This is why I tinker with networking hardware and try out Maker projects, even though I'm a software guy, and not necessarily a great one- because I'm sharing in the culture that can build a digital commons in the middle of the desert in one of the most war-torn regions of the planet using /scrap/. I mean, I'm sure Afghanistan is a great country, but the neighborhood's kinda rough- I have nothing but pride and admiration for FabFi and the people of Afghanistan.
It's probably going to get slashdotted pretty quick, so I'm going to copypasta some of their front page stuff here, and provide some of the links from their homepage at http://fabfi.fablab.af/;
FabFi is an open-source, FabLab-grown system using common building materials and off-the-shelf electronics to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of up to several miles. With Fabfi, communities can build their own wireless networks to gain high-speed internet connectivity---thus enabling them to access online educational, medical, and other resources.
In the summer of 2010, the Fab team set out to show that Fabfi could be both reliable and sustainable. Choosing Kenya as a pilot site Fabfolk seeded three Fablab students with the hardware to begin deploying a network as a community-operated business.
FabFi is a user-extensible long range point-to-point and mesh hybrid-wireless broadband transmission infrastructure. It is based on the simple idea that a network of simple, intelligent, interconnected devices can create reliable networks in unstable environments. We use simple physics to make low-cost devices communicate directionally for very long distances (physics is cool!), and flexible configurations to adapt to a large variety of conditions.
They build their own parabolic dishes to increase antenna gain, much like the coffee-cantennas, wok-antennas, and pringles-cantennas we've all heard of.
Their blog is at http://fabfiblog.fabfolk.com/
Their Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=140474289914
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
...if they are using any pre-Taliban C-64s in their setup, and if Junis is involved?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They made a WAN using wireless technology. Big fucking deal. And don't say that 'they are in a third world country so it's a big deal'. It isn't about money when it comes to technology, it is about brains, it doesn't always require money to be smart. I'm sure everybody I know makes more money than most people in Afghanistan and not a single one of them could do this, so money makes people dumb as far as I can tell.
When are people going to realize that making a big deal about what country a person is from when they do something is a big reason for xenophobia. All humans have the same genes and therefore the same ability to do the same exact thing. It shouldn't matter if you are from California or Zimbabwe.
In the US, we do the opposite: take the Internet and make it INTO trash.
Table-ized A.I.
They totally discovered radio!
I respect the Afghan ingenuity. It might be in some future point and time that the combination of laws (broadcast copyrights to lock down the public domain, ACTA, son-of-ACTA, COICA, etc.) combined with ISP interest in trying to make a buck from anything, and the fact that it will be easy for people to become persona non grats (and denied access to the Internet) will end up forcing people in the US to do exactly what is being done overseas.
Want to watch that YouTube video without paying your ISP for a "non premium visited site" fee, a streaming video fee, a fee per second, etc? The Afghan system may be the only way for you to see it, or any content not sanitized and sterilized by Big Media.
It might be that the *only* thing that will stop the Internet becoming like Compuserve (or more accurately Prodigy because Prodigy required each post to be reviewed and pass a censor before being able to be read) would be technology like this.
Plus, LAN stuff is cheap. A wireless router for a subnet is dirt cheap. Wi-Fi is quite inexpensive compared to WAN stuff.
If people started adding point to point links coupled with caching and other techniques to keep as much traffic on the LAN as possible, we (as in people who want to use the Internet for more than a passive TV and want content other than what Fox News wants to present us), this is something we really need here in the US as well.
Of course, latency will be hell and gone, but that's better than no connection at all.
Maybe RTFA if you are that interested. I seem to have been able to find all the information on how to set it up and even read through the wiki with the server setup required.
You must really fail at the Internet if you don't know how to click on a link...
Nice sensationalist headline, with a summary that contradicts it.
This guy lugs his desktop around: How to publish a Hindu newspaper in Pakistan
Well okay its Pakistan, not Afghanistan, but I suspect the poorer parts of both countries have similar challenges.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Junis, is that you? Shades of 2001.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Wiki with the tech details here
Yet, in Afghanistan, the authorities REFUSED that OLPC are equipped with WiFi connection, refusing kids a free access to the Internet, base on the false pretext of the dangerousness of its content for kids.
duh, why do you think they are using a difficult to track mesh network?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The story was a little sparse on information, but one of the links goes to their page here: http://fabfi.fablab.af/. I didn't go through their docs, but I see that they do exist.
You should be able to figure most of it out just by looking at the pictures, if you have a bit of knowledge in the area.
The dishes appear to be offset parabolic dishes or troughs. Full wave for 2.4Ghz is about 4.9". So if you want to reflect that, you'd want to go smaller than 1/4 wave, or use a mesh with holes no wider or taller than 1.2". In the pictures, they appear to be using metallic window screen. You could probably get away with "chicken wire" (small mesh wire for chicken coops, so chicks can't escape). I haven't measured the spacing on those in years, but I do remember that it's small.
For your transceiver, stick your wireless USB device at the focal point, and back it with something to reflect the signal going the wrong way back into the dish, so your power won't be wasted. A curved piece of foil or some other metal will do the trick.
I'm suggesting putting the device on the focal point, rather than running an antenna from the device to the focal point, to eliminate loss from the length of the antenna wire.
"Borrowing" a satellite TV antenna (such as DishNetwork, DirectTV, or Sky), and replacing the LNB with your transmitter would serve the same purpose, but it will be more obvious. At a distance, window screen is effectively invisible.
If I remember the DefCon contest winners for long range wifi correctly, they used old C/KU residential dishes, with their transceiver at the original focal point. From what I understand, there is an effective size limitation, so going from 3 feet to 15 feet wide won't necessarily help your situation. A 100 foot wide antenna won't have an advantage over a 5 foot wide one, and you may degrade your signal due to receiving extraneous noise.
If you're crafting it yourself, you have to calculate your focal point. If you're using a previously used parabolic dish, the focal point has already been found for you.
You may have to mess around with polarity a bit. I believe most wifi operates with a vertical alignment, but does seem to survive ok with horizontal alignment. If you're going for long range service, getting the correct alignment is key.
When you're working with a target antenna miles in the distance, it's helpful to have a good telescope to find the correct direction. Fine tuning is easy enough by hand with a decent signal strength app (assuming your transceiver supports it). I've done it with good tools, and even just with Netstumbler. Move it around slowly until you reach maximum signal strength.
I've used professionally made antennas before. The longest term one was a 24dB parabolic at my house, and a 14dB panel at my office. The range was only 1/2 mile, but both sides reported 100% signal strength. That was very impressive, since they couldn't even get over 80% when they were within close proximity to each other with standard antennas. I ran with that for over a year, until our office moved. I was very happy having my own person T1 at the house, after office hours.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Chicken wire is spaced slightly smaller than the diameter of a chicken's head, for obvious reasons. A lot of what you see sold as chicken wire isn't actually any use for chickens.
They're not doing any crappy little cantennas, they're building fair-sized (2 to 16 ft^2) dishes with chicken-wire or window screen stretched over a wood or plastic frame.
I wrote that with the assumption that most readers here haven't ever actually *seen* a chicken, much less a chicken coop. They may have spotted the wire at Home Depot, but that could be rare too. Last time I went looking for some, they had 3 rolls off in a corner that customers usually don't go to. It's strange that most Americans have never encountered livestock or a farm, even though they eat the results daily. Damned city dwellers. :) (said, as I'm writing this from a suburb, where there isn't anything resembling a farm for at least 20 miles in any direction)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I don't think they're really that hot on enforcement of signal strength limits in Afghanistan! If it interferes with someone's television or radio reception you might get hassled, but apart from that, anything goes.
duh, why do you think they are using a difficult to track mesh network?
That is the reason for the helpful directions.
--
The amnesia epidemic has been forgotten.
Is there even one Muslim country where porn is not outlawed?
Is there even one Muslim country where porn is not found?
No. 1 Nation in Sexy Web Searches? Call it Pornistan
Random connection: Exclusive: Pornography found in bin Laden hideout: officials
Far more troubling than the porn:
"I hope that Kuwait will enact the law for...sex slaves"
"When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her"
Pakistan: In the Land of Conspiracy Theories
What explains those crazed conspiracy theories running wild in Pakistan?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I read this entire post, thinking it was well written and seemingly well-informed enough that while most of what you were saying, I knew, I might learn something new.
I reached the end of the second to last paragraph, and I was going to write it off as "informative, but pedantic".
Then I hit the final paragraph, and you were instantly upgraded to "Awesome."
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
Best Buy might come a calling with a lawsuit.
But be careful around the neighbours, they carry AK47's.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
This kind of "good enough" tech, also seen in the Arab Spring internet cafes, depends on access to used, refurbished, and re-marketed electronics cast offs. A new bill just submitted to Congress (Green-Thompson) will ban trade with these "geeks of color". Do-gooders say that American jobs will result (Americans will begin using "trash" to make our own internet), and the geeks in the emerging markets, freed from the "ewaste" exploitation, will then leapfrog into 4G.
As a former Peace Corps volunteer, nothing makes me happier than to see kids who studied technology textbooks use the schematics to increase internet. Geeks of Color Entrepreneurs need SBA more than they need AID.
Gently reply
Real chicken wire is rather flimsy. What you want is generally called "hardware cloth" with 1/2" square openings. You can find it at Lowes for less than $10.
Yep, we raised chickens when I was growing up. Tasty!
You thought Afghanistan had social problems before? Now, without the benevolent oversight of the copyright holders, the Afghans will be filesharing like crazy, thus causing their entire country to collapse and the birth rate and life expectancy to plummet. Buildings will crumble into rubble, roads will take you to the wrong destination etc.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I have yet to see fully functional wifi routers in the trash around here.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm not really that impressed. If you RTFA, the only thing they are building from scrap are the reflectors/antennas. Hell, I know a bunch of people who did similar crap with pringels cans and clothes hangers.
Uhm, aren't those case-hardened OLPC laptops supposed to be for the poor, deprived kids? I hope this guy is helping his son (I suppose daughter not likely) do his homework?
If not, it appears the OLPC theft problem has not been solved.
Then again, maybe we (via Nicholas and his brother John) meant to supply Afgan insurgents with an insecure means of communication?
Preposterous, I'm sure!
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
Welcome to Slashdot.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I don't see how getting a larger dish wouldn't help. I don't buy that there's anything behind "an effective size limitation", unless you provide some links, that is. To get advantage of a big dish you definitely need to align things well -- the bigger the dish, the less tolerance for error there is.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
There's a reason it's called Anonymous Coward.
The Rob Flickenger "cantenna" design doesn't work. A Pringles tube is too small to be resonant anywhere near 2.4GHz, and the threaded rod with the stack of washers just blocks the signal from coming out of the end. It actually works better sideways, since the cardboard doesn't block any of the signal (and the silvery plastic doesn't act as a reflector).
Stopped waveguide antennas *do* work, but for a "cantenna" like that to work it would need to be about 80mm diameter and much shorter. I've built a couple like this, and they give about 6-8dB gain over a dipole. The really neat thing is that you can use them as a dish feed, although on all but the largest satellite dishes you find lying around it will be grossly over-illuminated. If you really want to feed a dish, put a USB wifi (or bluetooth) dongle in a corner reflector at the focus of an old satellite dish - make a wooden block that holds the USB dongle just about 5mm back from the front of where the LNB would go.
Incidentally, "Cantenna" is the name of an old Heathkit dummy load, so be careful asking radio amateurs about them - depending on the context you could be talking about a stopped waveguide or an old paint tin full of resistors, sand and engine oil...
It's worth pointing out that it's probably illegal to do this in most countries, without an appropriate licence. In Afghanistan, I suspect it's not a big deal.
off-the-shelf electronics
That's how. The multi-mile range is impressive. But aside from that, I could build an entire "Internet" with a trip to the computer store.
So close, yet so far.
Considered briefly, but I think I would get far less pleasure from it than the local foxes. Animals are something cute to admire from a distance, but not when you have to go and clean up after them.
This entire project will fall by the wayside in America because it's not wrapped up in pretty little buzzwords and it's not backed by grinning suits. I swear that the entire country is suffering Stockholm Syndrome as far as internet access is concerned.
Boredom is bliss.
Ya,.. I grew up on a farm. I haven't been back to one since. :) I may put up with a lot of shit at work, but it definitely doesn't smell anywhere near as bad. :) Pretty much, anywhere the animals are kept will have a distinctive aroma that you'd wish you had never smelled.
There's a possibility of learning a lot of things. That's why I can fix just about anything mechanical. You don't have a lot of choices. It's not really cheap to have your car towed 20 miles to town to get fixed. The same goes for your 40 year old diesel tractor that has more improvised parts than original equipment on it, home electrical, plumbing, and various other things. City dwellers had TV antennas, usually consisting of rabbit ears. Ours was a yagi up on a 50' tower. It's good way to learn about gravity too. Luckily it was only ever the tools.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
5.6km ought to be doable *if* you've got clear line-of-sight. If it's for a fairly permanent installation, it might be worth just dropping the cash on some commercial gear - Ubiquiti make some nice kit that is very reasonably priced.
Seconded on the UBNT gear. I've used PowerStation integrated antennas at 5.5km, and PowerBridges at 6km. The 5.5km link is even partially occluded by trees and still gave me good throughput. I've used the nanobrides in shorter links with good success as well. All this gear is very cheap and reliable.
Duh, empires just don't die, we still talking about Rome, using aqueducts and still enjoy bread and circus. Only "recalcitrant and demagogic" type leftists want to see USA "die". USA certainly is not going to die but it's going to pass trough a big shock thats is going to weed the useful American (be it white, latino, black, indian etc) from the useless whinny spoiled American that leach from the rest of the world. Anyway You don't deserve the troll mod while the poster above gets 0 moderation.
I recommend http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/third-world-america-why-i_b_706673.html the books name may be a bit trollish but the content it's pretty good and objective.
America may be a bitch but is our bitch, you certainly don't want to be under the boot of a Chinese empire, right?
I'm not American
repels me.
Well, you know what they say about two magnets with the same polarity, mister first-world-slashdot-poster. ;D Since you care enough to flame people who make positive posts about Afghani efforts, I encourage you to send some of your comparatively enormous paycheck to charitable organizations in the third (or even the first) world. There's plenty of orphans (Oxfam, CCF) and broke geeks (EFF, CBLDF, FabFi) who could use your money more than I can use your vitriol. Or, you could try suggesting to people that repel you some things they could do to make a substantial difference in the world. Good luck!
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
The Rob Flickenger "cantenna" design doesn't work.
You're not factoring in the use of Onion or Cool Ranch Pringles cans. Makes all the difference.
If they create their own internet in a war torn country, what's our excuse?
We've already got one.
- Are you sure you've got one?
Oh yes, it's very nice!
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Wait, which "National Science Foundation" gave them a grant for this? The U.S. one? Anyone else a little confused by that?
Honestly, why was I modded down for this? It was a valid question.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.