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Thread: Community WAN - as a No Frills Carrier - for the internet

  1. #1

    Community WAN - as a No Frills Carrier - for the internet

    Community Wan - as a No Frills Carrier - practical solution for high speed internet and perhaps development.

    Dear all,

    I have recently moved back to Delhi, and was a little disappointed with the penetration of broadband. I find that bandwidth is both expensive and unreliable for this age. I guess we all realize that if a society is to progress, it has to get on the information highway. This is no different from roads. Wherever there was a road progress followed.

    So, instead of sitting back and waiting for things to happen, I wanted to get proactive and do something about it. My search for a solution lead me to the irishwan project at http://www.irishwan.com/. I quote from their website below.

    IrishWAN is a technical hobby group which advises communities in remote areas on how to get themselvelves connected to broadband services. It is not an ISP, and does not offer a broadband service.

    It does, however, advise people on how to do it for themselves. Think if it as a 'think tank' on how to get around the lack of availability of broadband services in remote areas around Ireland



    Ireland is also a relatively less developed part in western europe, and the irishwan project thought of doing something nice to that community.

    My intent in posting this here is
    1. To understand the level of interest by the community.
    2. To find technical minded people wanting to collaborate on getting this moving and implemented for the jat lands of nothern india!

    I hope there is some interest.

    Thanks and Regards,
    Ajay

  2. #2
    Intel is working with several companies on a WiMAX project that will enable wireless broadband access for up to 10 kms. Access at longer distances will also be available although at slower speeds.
    However WiMAX is still far from complete so it will take a few years before its in public use.
    You can read more about it here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
    There is a place in Delhi named "Rani Bagh". I say its irony at it's fullest!

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by satyeshwar View Post
    Intel is working with several companies on a WiMAX project that will enable wireless broadband access for up to 10 kms. Access at longer distances will also be available although at slower speeds.
    However WiMAX is still far from complete so it will take a few years before its in public use.
    You can read more about it here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
    Satyeshwar:

    I am aware of the wimax and 4g and other promises. I actually do sometimes happen to buy into the promises they make at the conferences. But with a lot of assumptions.

    I was more concerned about the cost though. Since wimax will have to operate on licensed frequency bands, it will be commercial. And the cost would not be less that the current cost. Which is Rs. 1000 per month for a 256kbps or 13kBps line. I mean my london broadband was GBP40 for a 8mbps line with no caps. If we can get that in India some day soon enough, I'd be happy and not look for alternative solutions. With current costs, I don't think broadband is going to get adopted any faster in india. As a side note.... I guess bsnl provides adsl2+ connection to rural haryana and perhaps also UP. Can someone confirm?

    I was impressed with these guys for they are able to sustain the WAN .. for about Eur 10 pm for a 11mbps sustained throughput. It is indeed impressive. The initial infrastructure investment per node is also in the range of 200-400 euros. Which is well less than the cost of an year of my 256 kbps airtel connection in delhi.

    if we do the simple linear math.....
    sustained throughput = 11mbps=44*256 kbps.
    peak throughput = 27mbps= 108*256kbps
    So, effectively one single such link in a village can cater to 40-100 households at so called broadband speeds. Actually the situation is lot better than that. Because we could use caching proxy servers and save on a lot of that bandwidth.

    So, a simple star topology with one single antena would be able to cater to a lot of villages on the same line of sight (read road).

    As far as I could understand, the beauty of the solution lies in two things...
    1. the very small aperture of the transmitted signal and a very wide band of unlicensed spectrum.
    2. the use of commodity hardware (read inexpensive).


    Not sure if I am unnecessarily impressed.

    Cheers,
    Ajay

    PS: 1euro ~ 1dollar ~ Rs 50.
    Last edited by ajaygahlawat; March 30th, 2007 at 12:40 AM.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by satyeshwar View Post
    Intel is working with several companies on a WiMAX project that will enable wireless broadband access for up to 10 kms. Access at longer distances will also be available although at slower speeds.
    However WiMAX is still far from complete so it will take a few years before its in public use.
    You can read more about it here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
    Forgot to mention. Distance is not a problem with parabolic reflectors. 10 miles is easy peasy with the standard off the shelf antenas.

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