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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
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
Don't be that so harsh on the First World people, they have their own share of problems.
Never trust a spiritual leader who cannot dance -- Mr. Miyagi
In the US, we do the opposite: take the Internet and make it INTO trash.
Table-ized A.I.
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...
Well played, Sir. Let me just add as a biochemist that the genetic differences are too marginal to even justify the concept of "race" in humans. Local varieties that differ on a ultimately meaningless level.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Wiki with the tech details here
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.
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.