Grants:IEG/Wiki Mesh Network Community
Project idea
editWhat is the problem you're trying to solve?
editBackground
edit- Tamil Nadu Government issued almost 30 Lakh Free Laptops for students.
- India to reach 314 million mobile internet users by 2017
- Smart Phone users from developing nations assumes Facebook as the internet.
- TRAI banning Wikipedia Zero, FreeBasics like services in India, which could have lower the barrier to access knowledge.
The Problem
editTamil Nadu Government Free Laptop Scheme students not affordable to get Internet connection use it majorly for entertainment purposes or even sell it without having means to use it effectively. Also as smart phones are increasingly becoming a basic necessity for livelihood, rural and urban poor who own smart phones often only use Facebook and Watsapp as the Internet. When people have higher cost value to access knowledge or only few proprietary portals to consume knowledge, it will not help them to take informed decision on factors which affect their livelihood or career.
What is your solution?
editTo reduce the barrier to access knowledge of WikiMedia projects, building a local mesh network community where Wikipedia and other Wikimedia knowledge portals will be accessible to a particular geographical location based community for free, by joining the wifi network. If a locality adapts to this mesh network, they can consume sea of information for free, and even with adequate motivation and training, can enrich the knowledge base with their cultural information in local language, which will be a win-win situation.
Technical Aspects
editWhat is Mesh Network?
editMesh Network is a decentralized network of routers. As the network is decentralized, there is no centralized authority to expand, and no single point of failure, a perfect combination for low-cost, community owned infrastructure.
To know more about Mesh Network, please view the video by Freifunk, a German based Mesh Network Community.
Source of Internet
editMesh network can have multiple sources for internet, as the plan is the allow only Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects using, there is a high probability for convincing Educational institution or few house connections to share or donate a portion of their bandwidth for the Wiki Mesh Network.
Caching & Offline
editA Beagle Bone device with Squid Cache will be deployed into the network to act as a caching server to increase usability of the Mesh Network users. A local dump of Tamil & English Wikipedia and other available Wikimedia projects, will also be hosted, incase of Internet downtime and for faster response.
Routing Protocol
editBATMAN Advanced is the routing protocol we would be utilizing to transfer data inside the Mesh Network. BATMAN Advanced is being developed and maintained by Freifunk, a German based Mesh Network Community.
Possible Architecture of Network
edit
Project goals
edit- Establish a community owned wifi network to take Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects knowledges for free in a locality.
- Introduce Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects to a locality of people who use smart phones and Free Government Laptops.
- Encourage contributors for wikimedia projects from that locality in their local languages.
Project plan
editActivities
editPhase 1 (6 weeks):
editIdentifying suitable locality
edit- Finding atleast three areas with School/Universities/IT Parks with near by rural/urban poor locality with Smart Phones & Government Free Laptops users.
- Pitch the idea of Wiki Mesh to the educational institutions and locality surrounded by it.
- Depending on the interest of local people and education institutions select one area and start implementation.
Building technical expertise to build mesh network
edit- Prepare OpenWRT custom build with Wiki Mesh brand for possible router models to be procured.
- Setup test bed with few OpenWRT installed routers and perform usability test.
- Build scripts and tools for single click or single command OpenWRT installation to new routers.
- Setup Beagle Bone based proxy for maintaining cache, and for recording anonymised usage reports
Phase 2 (6 weeks):
editMesh Network
edit- Install 5 Wiki Mesh routers inside institution or homes of the selected locality.
- Install Beagle Bone based proxy inside the network.
- Perform load test for more users.
Community
edit- Conduct awareness for Wiki Mesh through media, pamphlets, posters, and casual meetings.
- Reach atleast 50 Wikimedia user accounts with English Wikimedia projects, Tamil Wikimedia projects, MediaWiki and Commons.
- Get feeback from the users of that locality and institution.
Phase 3 (7 weeks):
editMesh Network
edit- Install 8 Wiki Mesh routers inside institution or homes of the selected locality.
- Perform load test for more users.
- Analyse usage patterns and optimize proxy.
Community
edit- Conduct a hall meeting with the locality and potential mesh network managing members.
- Conduct awareness for Wiki Mesh through media, pamphlets, posters, and casual meetings.
- Reach atleast 200 Wikimedia user accounts with English Wikimedia projects, Tamil Wikimedia projects, MediaWiki and Commons.
- Get feeback from the users of that locality and institution.
Phase 4 (7 weeks):
editMesh Network
edit- Install 8 Wiki Mesh routers inside institution or homes of the selected locality.
- Perform load test for more users.
- Analyse usage patterns and optimize proxy.
Community
edit- Conduct promotional activities with localite photos and stories.
- Conduct awareness for Wiki Mesh through media, pamphlets, posters, and casual meetings.
- Reach to atleast 500 Wikimedia user accounts with English Wikimedia projects, Tamil Wikimedia projects, MediaWiki and Commons.
- Organize local users as community to manage the network.
- Release document to increase the mesh network to the community in local language with pictures.
Other Potential Possibilities
edit- Introducing and distributing Kiwix application.
- For students, Wikipedia Education program in the locality.
Budget
editTotal amount requested
editTotal: $ USD 8520
Detailed Budget
edit| Sl | Particulars | Unit Cost | Extended Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Project Manager | 10 hours/week with USD 15/hour for 26 weeks | USD 3900 |
| 2 | Technician | 10hours/week with USD 12/hour for 26 weeks | USD 3120 |
| 3 | Routers(20) | USD 50 | USD 1000 |
| 4 | Ethernet Cables | USD 30 | USD 30 |
| 5 | Hardisks(2) | USD 60 | USD 120 |
| 6 | SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced | USD 70 | USD 70 |
| 7 | Protective Case | USD 30 | USD 30 |
| 8 | Miscellaneous (stationary, print, etc) | USD 50 | USD 50 |
| 9 | Hall meeting & campaign materials | - | USD 200 |
Community engagement
edit- Announcement of work.
- Every phase will have feed back session, so four live feedback sessions will be conducted.
- Feedbacks will be maintained online.
- Locality people will be involved in mesh network management.
- Documents for how-tos will be given in local language with pictorial representations.
- Decision making like increasing mesh, adding more nodes, will be done as a community, and finance can be collected as a community.
- Mesh network users will get introduced to Wikimedia communities through local communities.
Sustainability
edit- Documentation on how to grow and maintain mesh network will be given in local language with pictorial representations.
- During phase 2 and 3, people from locality will be encouraged to take part in managing network, and growing it as a community.
- Collective functioning and transparent functioning of all phases will be ensured by the project team to the people of locality.
- Mesh network expansion is cheap, simple, and it can be grown to much larger audience without much difficulties or technical knowledge.
- Taking part in mesh network community and wikimedia projects will help the rural and urban poor livelihood through various ways, so they will involve in enriching it.
- Wiki Mesh provides knowledge for free and expects the community to maintain it, which is a sustainable win-win situation with low effort and high benifit.
Measures of success
edit- Working mesh network 24/7 and providing free access to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects through it.
- Atleast 500 Wikimedia user accounts with English Wikimedia projects, Tamil Wikimedia projects, MediaWiki and Commons.
- Atleast 5% Editors/Contributors from over all users of mesh network.
Get involved
editParticipants
editProject Manager: Alagunambi Welkin
- Have involved in building various knowledge freedom communities activities from 2009 in Southern India.
- One among the founding members of Chennai Mesh Network Community.
- Have taken part and interviews various Mesh Networks communities at - Battle Mesh v8
Potential Partners
edit- Free Software Foundation Tamil Nadu
- Free Software Movement of India
- Free Software Hardware Movement of Pondicherry
- Pondicherry Mesh Network Community
- Chennai Mesh Network Community
- Educational institutions of Tamil Nadu.
- Volunteer I would like to participate whenever possible in terms of infrastructure building, activism, development. Libreaim (talk) 04:42, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
- Volunteer Would like to take a part in this project. Will give my contribution as much as possible 122.174.108.193 04:45, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
Community notification
editPlease paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. Need notification tips?
Wikipedia Chennai Mailing list
Free Software Foundation Tamil Nadu Mailing list
Indian Linux Users Group Chennai Mailing list
Endorsements
editDo you think this project should be selected for an Individual Engagement Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project below! (Other constructive feedback is welcome on the discussion page).
- With increasing challenges of Access to Knowledge, a free and open internet, it is high time that Wikimedia projects test and develop alternative, distributed and community-owned models. I a very keen to see the outcome of this project. Ravi (talk) 08:49, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
- I participate in a similar network in Slovenia (wlan slovenija) and I think such networks are amazing ways to involve communities into their Internet access, educate and empower individuals how Internet works, and in general to bring Internet to places where there is otherwise little commercial interest to do so, or is that interest misguided. Mitar (talk) 07:30, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
- Mesh network in itself is a fun way to learn new stuff about the way networks work. Its like a cool project that is usually taken up by a community than a single person. So more than a thing for sharing information across it brings a community together. Its not something that you buy in a store and just use it, you work on it and get to know about it. Its cool and I endorse it.123survesh (talk) 19:26, 17 April 2016 (GMT+5:30)
- This is an important project to have for areas which needs access to low cost Internet. Even we had tried to put something together but needed more time and resources. http://freedomhack.fsmk.org/fork-the-internet Vincentvikram (talk) 15:39, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
- I believe students should be provided a scope to explore the importance of participation & collaboration in accessing knowledge, along with personal knowledge management skills as practically as it must be. To do so, penetration & distribution of collaborative platforms like wikimedia, and other wikimedia projects must reach them. The spread, distribution, propagation of wikimedia - i believe - is possible through wireless (radio) mesh networking that would keep the ecosystem alive, economic & grassroots oriented. I would lend my support whenever i could to observe my locality enriched with such novel goal. Libreaim (talk) 04:39, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
- Good way to give the free knowledge to all the people. 122.174.108.193 04:44, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
- A smartest way to take the free knowledge to everywhere even in the place where there is no internet connection. People can easily utilize the knowledge from wikipedia without any cost. Just a basic setup is needed that's all, as a community in a place that's not a matter to bring a basic setup. I like way of this proposal. Anandmoorthyj (talk) 04:50, 25 May 2016 (UTC)