WISPiab work meeting 200806
Work meeting of the WISP-in-a-box project
Date
June 2-3-4, 2008
9-17 h
Location
Meraka Institute, Building 43 C, Hummingbird Room (C128, ground floor)
Pretoria
Invitation List
People and organisations with an active interest in building a concrete product that helps bringing
connectivity to underserviced, underprivileged and overcharged communities in Africa.
Invitation list:
- Steve Song / Shuttleworth Foundation (monday only)
- Rael Lissoos / Dabba
- Henry Marnitz / Ndlovu Medical Centre (1 day)
- Mark Summer, Inveneo (with request to forward to Ubiquiti)
- Elektra
- Mike Jensen (not confirmed)
- Kobus Roux, Meraka (NOT monday)
- Karel Matthee, Meraka
- Kim Gush, Meraka
- David Johnson, Meraka
- Chris Morris, Meraka
- Grant Cambridge, Meraka
- Shela Boshomane, Meraka
- George James, Meraka
- Johann Hugo, Meraka
- John Hay, Meraka
- Ajay Makan, Meraka
- Sebastian Buettrich
More proposals are welcome!
Budgets for travel, if needed: Please contact us!
Contact
Sebastian
mail: sebastian@less.dk
skype: sebastian_buettrich
cell: (+27) (0) 79 915 32 92
Timeplan
The timeplan is draft level and will be adjusted to people's ability to join for limited periods.
The first day will be dedicated to the organizational layer,
introducing the various projects and teams, discussing the business models, identifying overlap of work agendas as well as the main challenges each of the projects are seeing.
The second day will move down to detail level, moving from business and organizational models to technology requirements/specifications.
The third day
Day 1 - Monday, June 2
Morning
Creating Context
Introductions, Presentations of participants
(Short 10 mns, informal project introductions)
- Introduction and WISPiab Project (Sebastian Buettrich)
- Dabba / Orange Farm / Village Telco (Rael Lissoos)
- Ndlovu Medical Centre (Henry Marnitz)
- Peeble's Valley Mesh (David Johnson)
- Digital Doorway (tba)
- Inveneo platform (Mark Summer)
- WISPiab work status (George James)
- Wireless Africa project (Chris Morris)
- Freifunk, B.a.t.m.a.n. & Meraka Mesh Testbed (Elektra)
- DIY Guide & Zambia LinkNet (Karel Matthee)
- IP04 (it46, rowetel) (on behalf of the project: Sebastian Buettrich)
Afternoon
Business models
Introduction: Sebastian
Business models may be classified according to a number of different dimensions -
e.g. financial/economic layer, tech/network topology layer, applications layer, social layer, -
Based on the experience of the participants and projects, business models should be reviewed with the goal of reaching a downselection of models that should be implemented/supported in the first iteration of the WISPiab project.
Classical examples:
- Voice services - The Village Telco
- "Line sharing" - sharing internet access between organizations
- Telecentre / Internet Cafe
- Campus / School network
The goal is to go through all our relevant models, to classify them on all layers,
and to identify the technology implications (such that technology follows business models, and not vice versa), producing a clear results list.
Cooperations and Resources
There is significant overlap between projects on the technology layer. All projects are subscribing to free software models (GPL / CC, etc).
We are operating against a backdrop of
- challenged (human) resource situation
- brain drain / skills exodus
- wanting to build local (i.e. african? ... southern african? .... south african?) capacity
Cooperation between projects seems appropriate and possible.
The goal is to conclude this meeting with a clear picture of modes of cooperation.
Advisory Group
We wish to form an advisory group / peer group, including partly the invitees of this meeting, but not limited to these.
Day 2 - Tuesday, June 3
Morning
Technical Requirements / Specifications - detail level
Examples of concrete detail issues:
- Authentication - where and how
- Billing in mesh networks
- VoIP in mesh networks
The goal of this session is to fill the matrix of
technology requirements x project/business model
and then check this matrix against the various existing hardware/software platforms.
Hardware platforms aspects
A number of different hardware/software platforms are fulfilling subsets of our requirements.
The available platforms need to be discussed and evaluated, towards a decision on what to choose.
The platforms that our projects are currently working with are:
- Linksys WRT54, with firmwares OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Freifunk, CoovaAP, and similar
- Open-Mesh, Accton - with Open Mesh Firmware (new firmware anoounced for summer 2008, with: RO.B.IN, orangemesh, COOVA, etc)
- Inveneo platform
- Ubiquti NS, PS
- Meraka Bokkie routers
- pls add!
Afternoon
Status and planning of implementations
- WISPiab status and work plan
- Dabba / Village Telco work sprint, June 16-20
- Can we prepare and support that workshop
Day 3 - Wednesday, June 4
Morning
Productification / Dissemination / Rollout strategies
- Strategies for the productification of software packages
- Sourceforge platform plans (Steve?)
- Ubuntu / UCK (Sebastian, Mark, Elektra)
- Rollout capacity
Afternoon
Next steps
- Dabba Worksprint
- WISPiab work plan
- Digital Doorway work
- Wireless Africa, June meeting
etc