Open. Connect. Communicate.
Connecting the next 5 billion?
Presentation:
Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Caribbean ITS Conference 2009
Associate Professor Montego Bay, Jamaica
Information Systems Department Online at http://slideshare.net/sverma
San Francisco State University
San Francisco, CA 94132 USA Creative commons license
http://creativecommons.org/

me

Workshop
work∙shop
Function: noun
Date: 1562
a usually brief intensive educational program for a relatively small
group of people that focuses especially on techniques and skills in
a particular field
Source: merriam­webster

Supply side
if we build it they will come...

Drivers of Change
● Better chips
● Moore’s Law: Performance doubles every 18 to 24
months, with size and cost remaining at a constant
● 1971: Intel C4004 ­ 2300 transistors
● 2009: Intel 8­core Xeon (Nehalem­EX) – 2.3 billion
transistors
Sources: http://www.cpu­world.com/CPUs/4004/Intel­C4004.html and
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20090526comp.htm

Drivers of Change
● Bigger pipes
● Metcalfe’s Law: Usefulness of a network increases
with the square of the number of users connected
to the network
● Internet
– 1969 – 4 nodes (October 1969)
– 2009 – 625,226,456 nodes (Jan 2009)
Source: https://isc.org/solutions/survey/history

squares
(a+b)2 = a2+b2+ 2ab

Value within a network
Community X Community Y
A B
(32) = 9 connections
2 nodes C to C
C E C to D
(22) = 4 connections
C to E
A to A
D to C
A to B
D to D
B to A D D to E
B to B
3 nodes E to C
E to D
E to E
Note: Each community has some potential value, that may or may not be completely realized

Value of a combined network – community Z
5 nodes
A B
C E
(52) = 25 connections D
A to A B to A C to A D to A E to A
A to B B to B C to B D to B E to B
A to C B to C C to C D to C E to C
A to D B to D C to D D to D E to D
A to E B to E C to E D to E E to E

Where's the cheese?
● (2+3) nodes leads to (2+3)2 connections
● 5 nodes lead to 25 connections
● We already had 4 in community X and 9 in
community Y
● In the new community Z, we have an extra of 12
connections.
● This is where the cheese is at, so to speak.

2ab
● Drivers of change
● Metcalfe's law
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law
● Moore's law
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

Pushing the supply side
A common question:
“Do they have a business model?”
hint: the www did not have a business model

Leveraging the network
For value to flow across the network,
interoperability is key
The network m­u­s­t be open and unencumbered
hint: look up net neutrality

E­mail works
RFC 822
STANDARD FOR THE FORMAT OF ARPA
INTERNET TEXT MESSAGES
August 13, 1982

IM doesn't

Where is imunified.org now?

Networks
two step process:
a) connect
b) communicate

Convergence
from telco platforms to commodity tech

The free and open source pbx
http://www.asterisk.org/
Two cases: Astlinux and Trixbox

Astlinux
● Astlinux (http://www.astlinux.org/)
● 64 MB installation
● 128 MB RAM
● Web­based (https) management
● Soekris net 4801 (http://www.soekris.com/ )
● 233 MHz x86 processor
● Embedded, 12 to 48 volt PoE
● Carry 10 to 12 ­simultaneous­ SIP or IAX calls

soekris net 4801
Source: http://www.soekris.com/net4801.htm Approx 170 USD

Astlinux variants
CD iso
config+log+voicemail
VMWare
image
Compact USB Keydisk
Flash
Hard
Drive
http://sourceforge.net/projects/astlinux/
Interested? See more here, here and here

2007.june.28:thursday Web Interface
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. 23

Trixbox
● Trixbox appliance
● CentOS Linux based
● 1.6 GHz Dual­Core
● 1GB RAM
● Can handle
– 48 ports
– 200 SIP phones
http://www.trixbox.org/
Or simply use a PIII or better, with 512 MB RAM

centralized

distributed

Cost
expensive to interconnect

local
We set up local networks first

interconnected
We interconnect when we can afford to

Who do we communicate with?
communication: begin locally or globally

Is 24x7 global connectivity overrated?

Chicken and the egg
Infrastructure or nodes – which must come first?

One Laptop Per Child
http://laptop.org
and
http://wiki.laptop.org

Somebody is finally
thinking of the
children!

A different generation...

School Galadima, Abuja City, Nigeria
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Galadima

Samkha village located in the suburbs of northern Thailand
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Thailand/Ban_Samkha

Khairat school is India's pilot site.
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_India

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ulaanbaatar

Ethopia
http://www.reactivated.net/weblog/archives/2008/10/olpc­ethiopia­updates/

Ghana
http://www.flickr.com/photos/olpc/2921143251/

Cameroon
http://www.flickr.com/photos/olpc/3110907018/in/set­72157611290673682/

Afghanistan
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Afghanistan

Colombia
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Colombia

Peru
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Peru

Rwanda
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Rwanda

Iraq
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Iraq

Haiti
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Haiti

Solomon Islands
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Solomon_Islands

Nepal
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Nepal

OLPC Jamaica: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Jamaica

Deployments worldwide
http://www.buzzmoo.com/?p=257

Deployments worldwide
... ...
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Property:Number_of_manufactured_laptops

school...to go

Sugar: Free and Open Source
Collaboration
Activities
Journal
Sugarlabs at http://sugarlabs.org

Collaboration

Activities
● Write
● A simple word processor
● Chat
● Similar to Google Talk
● Browse
● Firefox­based
● Record
● stills and video
More activities... http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities

Journal

Mesh Networking
● Mesh does not require central hub­like
infrastructure
● Wireless mesh works even when the computer
sleeps
Based on an early draft of IEEE 802.11s

Under a tree model
Mesh “under a tree” model.
See slide 7 at http://wiki.laptop.org/images/a/a3/Country_Technical_Support.pdf

Local network

Global network

Until then? Sneakernet!
● Offline Internet
● Not so far fetched. Akamai and Internet Archive do
something similar, with mirroring
● Running the mirroring cycle
– A few hours, or a few weeks?
● See projects:
● Wizzy
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizzy_Digital_Courier
● Motoman
– http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Motoman

So, until then...
We set up local networks, and run them as self­
contained worlds.
Imagine that. Internet in a box!
Once we have such networks, we can do
interesting things with it...

every computer doubles up as a
phone
)))))..............(((((

Run VOIP clients on laptops

Run Asterisk on the School Server
Fit­PC as School Server
http://www.fit­pc.com/ See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/IAX for more

hello!
hello!
hello!
hello!
hello!
hello!

communicate locally with...
...brother, sister, uncle, aunt, cousin, bus driver,
fishmonger, doctor, banker, loan shark (ouch!),
healer, priest, lawyer (more ouch!), mayor...

remember, its a 2 step process
1) connect
2) communicate

some day, access to the Internet will be cheap
enough...

some day a telco connection will be cheap
enough...

That day, we light it up and set the network
ablaze!

Until then, a month­old copy of Wikipedia isn't that
bad.

Open. Connect. Communicate.
Connect the next 5 billion!

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