Team:Communications

Communications (coordinators: Malaz, Ziggy)

Activities: Define communications requirements, suitable technologies, and implementation strategies

This is the Wiki page for The RBE10K Project's Communications Team.

Objectives of the Team

An RBE10K community would have at least two primary communications requirements:

1. Internet access for the community (wherever it happens to be based)
2. Wireless access to the community's network from most places within the community

Internet usage and access within the community

The community will be connected to the world primarily through the Internet. The Internet will enable the community to stay communicated via email, voice and video communications, to access information and free services from around the world, participate in academic and artistic circles, and open-source and activism projects, maintain all the RBE10K communities interconnected for mutual assistance, and publish on social media the happenings within the community. Internet access will be paramount, and one of the very few ongoing monetary expenses that the community will have to be able to afford.

Residents in the community will all share the available community's Internet bandwidth through the community's Intranet routers, which will implement proxies and caching systems to optimise Internet bandwidth. In order to minimise dependency on Internet's bandwidth and services, the community's Intranet will implement many services such as email, social networking, personal cloud storage and backup systems, mirrors of open-source software such as Linux distributions or CPAN, etc.

Community's Intranet

The community will concentrate a single Internet access point and share it throughout its premises with all its residents, much in the same way a University does. The community will have its own Intranet and rely on it for most of its internal happenings, like IMAR, social networking, multimedia, software repositories, databases for a great variety of services such as literature, how-to and training videos, etc. Residents each will have a portable computer (laptop/tablet/netbook) which will be acquired in bulk as part of the community set-up with the community's original budget, and these will be connected to the Intranet (and through it access also the Internet) via WiFi or an alternatively suitable wireless networking technology such as a privately run WiMAX or 3G network.

The community's Intranet will ideally be based on IPv6, and rely as much as possible on inexpensive but properly suitable equipment, preferring using open systems to closed architectures wherever practicable (e.g. pfSense-based multi-homed PCs instead of Cisco routers).

Wireless for the community

WiFi

WiFi is a ubiquitous technology, modular, extensible, and affordable. Many universities provide WiFi access throughout their premises. However, because of the low range of WiFi signal, wireless routers are required everywhere, increasing the cost and complexity of deployment.

WiMAX

Since WiMAX implements IPv6 well, as well as multicasting and QOS, and a single tower can provide access for the whole community everywhere, it would be perhaps the best alternative, provided the equipment is affordable. Mini-PCI WiFi+WiMAX cards for notebooks are sufficiently affordable (~$10).

Members

Name

User

Activities

Malaz

User:Malaz

Technical expertise, coordination, support, research

Ziggy

User:Ziggy

Coordination, support, research

Requests

Name

Ref

Description

Offers

Name

Ref

Description

External links

• The complete guide to WiMAX - http://www.techradar.com/au/news/networking/wi-fi/the-complete-guide-to-wimax-498184