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Internet in a Box

internet-in-a-box.org

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Re: Internet in a Box

#51

Post by ericb »

flaburgan wrote: post #26

With the crazy news we have those past months, I actually started to wonder what would happen if internet went offline "for real" (let's say, several weeks) here in developed countries. I know we can easily download Wikipedia and Openstreetmap. But what else? And how to share it? I can do a hotspot home, but would my neighbors understand it? I would need some kind of captive portal to tell them when they connect to m…

I would add an LLM like QwQ-32B to the mix--that has a ton of compressed knowledge embedded in it.

I would also store it in a steel Oscar the Grouch style trash can for a cheap faraday cage, which gets you protection from solar flares, and EMP blasts.

Re: Internet in a Box

#52

Post by syncsynchalt »

gioazzi wrote: post #3

Brilliant concept! I recently met the fine folks at Beekee who make something rather similar: https://beekee.ch/beekeebox/ It's an apparently simple problem on the surface, but quite hard to get it right... I once worked on a wireless network deployment for a transit refugee camp, and at least that was built on the assumption that some sort of Internet connection would be available at all times, making remote managem…

The article is about devices that don't use internet access — they provide a shallow copy of wikipedia, learning sites, and the infrastructure for devices to connect and use these as if they were connected to the full network.

Re: Internet in a Box

#53

Post by teleforce »

This is the limited offline version of the Internet for the rural communities but what we need is the local-first version of the Internet for the rural community [1].

Fun facts, about one third or 2.6 Billions of the world's population has no or very limited Internet connectivity [2]. The main root cause is most probably power not the infrastructure.

Most of the people in authority probably don't realize that this rural connectivity does not need a fast high speed network as long as it has connectivity. It can be slow as kbps bandwidth, a kind of "sipping" Bittorent based download, but a download nonetheless.

The main problem of the Internet connectivity it's not really the infrastructure itself but the overall power budget requirements for the connectivity infrastructure.

We need to bring back the very efficient wireles modulation for the remote and rural Internet as exemplify by the DMR with its very efficient 4-FSK [3],[4]. This type of wireless modulation employed constant envelope modulation that is far more efficient (8 to 15 times more efficient) than the alternative TETRA with comparable bandwith [5]. It's reported that DMR operates on 1 kWh per day while TETRA is on 15 kWh per day thus the former can be sustained by only solar panels but not the latter.

Please note that TETRA itself is not a very efficient modulation with π⁄4 differential quadrature phase-shift keying (π⁄4-DPSK) since it requires linear amplifiers due to its non-constant envelope wireles modulation. It's even worst for typical OFDM based system (e.g Wi-Fi HaLoW, LTE, 5G, etc) [6]. This is because a similar power budget setup to DMR would have required probably around 100 times more power or more than 100 kWh per day including the air-conditioning systems for the linear power amplifier systems [7].

Thus these remote and rural base stations can be potentially powered by merely solar panels and the infrastructure does not need to be expensive since the base station structure can be made from bamboo [8].

[1] Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud:

https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/

[2] About one-third of the global population, or 2.6 billion people, remain offline.

https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2023-09-12-unive...

[3] Digital mobile radio (DMR):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_mobile_radio

[4] DMR networks for health emergency management: A case study:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220761899_DMR_netwo...

[5] TETRA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TETRA

[6] Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_frequency-division_...

[7] Base Station ON-OFF Switching in 5G Wireless Networks: Approaches and Challenges:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315696556_Base_Stat...

[8] IEEE Connecting the Unconnected (CTU) 2022 Challenge Winners:

https://ctu.ieee.org/challenge/2022-ctu-challenge-2/

Re: Internet in a Box

#54

Post by prepperdisk »

entropie wrote: post #25
kh_hk wrote: post #15

Seeing the demo I noticed it looks like this "prepper disk" that was submitted days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43790409 Makes me think the prepper disk was maybe a rebrand of internet in a box without proper attribution?

> PrepperDisk is similar to a DIY, open-source project that started in 2012 called Internet in a Box and which has become popular in rural areas in developing countries where internet access is sparse. The idea is basically that you can carry around an external hard drive-sized, mini version of the internet with you that creates a local network your phone or laptop can access. > https://www.404media.co/sales-of-hard-…

We are actually IIAB partners, we attribute to all the various OOS projects (Kiwix, IIAB)in our credits and comply with all the licensing. Our goal was just to make those packages polished as a consumer product and add newer content (some licensed and some commissioned ).

Re: Internet in a Box

#55

Post by SamBam »

kh_hk wrote: post #15

Seeing the demo I noticed it looks like this "prepper disk" that was submitted days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43790409 Makes me think the prepper disk was maybe a rebrand of internet in a box without proper attribution?

I'm not really sure I understand how a "Prepper Box" is different from an external hard drive. Unlike the devices in TFA, which are meant for many students in a classroom using at once, this seems to be more of a single-person-looking-up-things concept.

Re: Internet in a Box

#56

Post by SamBam »

sgt wrote: post #23
skylerwiernik wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone already thought of this and uploaded all of the contents of the box to a website! You can find it at wikipedia.com

That's missing the point. Full Internet access is just too broad. Going to wikipedia and aimlessly browsing about is fun, but a more educative approach can narrow the focus for students and especially for younger learners. How to market it in developed countries is going to be a tough nut to crack though.

Plenty of schools have network control over the devices that are used in schools, meaning that you can indeed narrow the focus by only allowing a few websites to be accessed.

My kid's school uses a software called GoGuardian, which allows individual teachers to whitelist specific websites for the students in their class during their class period.

Re: Internet in a Box

#57

Post by SamBam »

einpoklum wrote: post #42

It is the opposite of Internet in a box. This exemplifies how, in our day and age, "The Internet" is mostly a one-sided experience where a few large organizations offer a bunch of content, which they control, for your perusal. It would have been more "Internet in a box" if it would have helped people set up their own services and pages; and if it were extensible using other radio-capable devices.

I was thinking this too.

They do talk about using FileZilla or Nextcloud to upload files, and mention using CMSes like WordPress, so maybe it's quite possible, just not a big focus.

I agree that making it easy for teachers, students, and anyone in the community making their own discoverable webpages would be a great aspect to this.

Re: Internet in a Box

#60

Post by kilroy123 »

flaburgan wrote: post #26

With the crazy news we have those past months, I actually started to wonder what would happen if internet went offline "for real" (let's say, several weeks) here in developed countries. I know we can easily download Wikipedia and Openstreetmap. But what else? And how to share it? I can do a hotspot home, but would my neighbors understand it? I would need some kind of captive portal to tell them when they connect to m…

I've gone a step further, I have built a 50 TB NAS and I'm loading up as much as I possibly can.
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