🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May27.141355.978@darwin.ntu.edu.au> b_duke@darwin.ntu.edu.au (Brian Duke) writes:
                                [...]
>Getting the net properly working in developing countries would perhaps 
>be the single most important development in helping them to compete in 
>research and education. However lots of other important things would have 
>to happen at the same time, like good telephone and fax connections, 
>better organised institutions etc.
                                [...]
Hey, is it really necessary to have a local telephone exchange before you
can hook up internationally?

Couldn't a small satellite dish with the appropriate equipment do the job?  I
really don't know the answer to this question, that is why I am asking.  I am
recalling stories of Kuwaitis during the Gulf War who were able to maintain
telephone contact with the rest of the world because of the satellite dishes
they had in their back yards.

--
            _.
--Steve   ._||__
  Warren   v\ *|
             V  

In article <1991May28.183943.16259@convex.com> swarren@convex.com (Steve Warren) writes:
>Hey, is it really necessary to have a local telephone exchange before you
>can hook up internationally?
>
>Couldn't a small satellite dish with the appropriate equipment do the job?  I
>really don't know the answer to this question, that is why I am asking.  I am
>recalling stories of Kuwaitis during the Gulf War who were able to maintain
>telephone contact with the rest of the world because of the satellite dishes
>they had in their back yards.

   Most of those were people using INMARSAT, a system which is designed for
ship to shore radio communication.  Suffice it to say that you could buy a
small exchange for the cost of an INMARSAT terminal, and you have to feed'
it several thousand dollars worth of quarters every hour.  This is not at
all a profitable way to network.
   Another way is to rent a satellite transponder and get your signal over
it.  This also is extremely expensive, although probably cheaper in the long
run than using INMARSAT.  It also permits extremely high bandwidths.  This
might be a good way to link your country to the net, but you have to be
feeding a lot of other nodes in order for the wide bandwidth of this system
to be profitable.
   The third way I can think of is through amateur packet radio.  The problem
here is that of getting a license in the country involved, the fact that
the amateur satellites are not in geosynchronous orbit so they can only be
used at certain times of the day, and that they can't be used for anything
even vaguely commercial.  This is a very powerful resource, though, and 
pretty cheap too.
   Still, a good telephone system is essential to modern business.  I think
that having phone lines and preferably a local exchange is more important
than computer communications.  Start with the easy stuff first; it's quite
easy to set up local phone systems and probably not all that expensive.
Old crossbar exchanges are available in the U.S. by the pound (avoirdupois,
not sterling), and there is a lot of equipment which is perhaps dated by
modern standards, but quite serviceable.
--scott

In article <1991May28.204751.11309@news.larc.nasa.gov> kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) writes:
>   Still, a good telephone system is essential to modern business.  I think
>that having phone lines and preferably a local exchange is more important
>than computer communications.  Start with the easy stuff first; it's quite
>easy to set up local phone systems and probably not all that expensive.

I remember reading in one of the VITA newsletters about using computer
communications (via radio links, I think) in Africa.  I may not be remembering
this 100% correctly, but I think the point was that in some cases it
was better to use the available radio links for computer mail instead of voice
links, partly because if the radio links got very noisy (which happened a lot),
voice messages would be lost or misinterpreted, while computer messages would
just be retransmitted with more error correction until they got through.

So, perhaps computer mail is a good way to make the most efficient use of
a low-quality telephone or radio-link system?
--
						Ehud Reiter
						(e.reiter@edinburgh.ac.uk)

On the subject of possibly accessing the net with packet radio:

I am not a ham, but I delved into it at one point out of interest. I was
particularly fascinated by packet radio. However, at the time it seemed to
me that speeds were too slow to serve any practical purpose - especially
to access the internet.

This all would have been back in the 80's, when most of the hams I knew
were operating at ~1200 baud.. and then there was some propagation delay
to be dealt with, as I recall.

My question is this: Has packet radio progressed enough in the last few
years to serve as a _practical_ communications medium? Could it realistically
compete with more standard methods?

  Marc.

In article <1991May28.204751.11309@news.larc.nasa.gov>
kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) writes:
>   Still, a good telephone system is essential to modern business.  I
think
>that having phone lines and preferably a local exchange is more important
>than computer communications.  Start with the easy stuff first; it's
quite
>easy to set up local phone systems and probably not all that expensive.

Oh yes, a good telephone system is essential to modern business!
But if you have a bad and overloaded one (and slow and unreliable postal
service) there are cases were carrying some of communications by a computer
networking service (using the bad phone system you have!) will give you 
a leading edge; at least that's one of the lessons I learned from discussions
with colleagues from Eastern Europe over the last year.

BTW from network school in Dec. 90 targeted mainly atnetwork school in Dec.
90 targeted mainly at 

This may seem strange - and needs and available infrastructure in third
world countries may be different (and certainly vary) - but just consider
your computer busy trying to establish a connection during all of the night
to relay some messages...
Of course you need to have at least some parts of a wrotten phone system...
The difference between former Eastern Block and third world often may be
that the former usually has some internal infrastructure however wrotten
but very bad international connectivity (quite bad even between the old allies)
while the reverse maybe true for quite a number of third world countries.

Anyway at a network school in Dec. 90 targeted mainly at networking staff from
Eastern Europe but also attended by a few colleagues from other continents
I found examples where the situtation seemed to be quite similar in countries
that inherited their phone system from the (e.g.) British some decades ago 
or that had their phone systems maintained for some decades under the auspices
of communist internationalism...



Ruediger Volk
Universitaet Dortmund, Informatik IRB
Postfach 500 500
D-W-4600 Dortmund 50
Germany

E-Mail: rv@Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE    (or rv@unido.uucp, rv@unido.bitnet)
Phone:  +49 231 755 4760                 Fax:  +49 231 755 2386

In article <MAS.91May29090831@arcsun.arc.ab.ca> mas@arcsun.arc.ab.ca (Marc Schroeder) writes:
>I am not a ham, but I delved into it at one point out of interest. I was
>particularly fascinated by packet radio. However, at the time it seemed to
>me that speeds were too slow to serve any practical purpose - especially
>to access the internet.
>This all would have been back in the 80's, when most of the hams I knew
>were operating at ~1200 baud.. and then there was some propagation delay
>to be dealt with, as I recall.
>My question is this: Has packet radio progressed enough in the last few
>years to serve as a _practical_ communications medium? Could it realistically
>compete with more standard methods?

   Well, because of bandwidth limitations with HF, it's not going to get
much higher than 1200 baud.  And granted that 1200 baud isn't so hot for
internet access, but it's amazing how much can be done with 1200.  Until
about ten years back, hams were limited to 110 baud with Baudot code by
U.S. law.  1200 bps is a vast improvement, but of course it requires much
better propagation conditions for HF than the slower speeds.
   There are a lot of us still running morse code at 20 wpm, and it's
astonishing how much information can be carried if it's properly encoded.
--scott

 swarren@convex.com (Steve Warren) writes:

> Hey, is it really necessary to have a local
> telephone exchange before you can hook up
> internationally? Couldn't a small satellite dish
> with the appropriate equipment do the job?

I think it's being done; I ran across a complaint
from a New Zealander that ruffians from the US
were failing to find local ftp sites, and instead
running up his NZ satellite charges by doing ftp
across the big puddle.  From the description, this
was a site link rather than a national link, but I
may have misunderstood that part.

Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>

If you didn't catch them in your list, add Namibia
to the nations on the net; I've exchanged email with
a doctor who reads news there (feed is through South
Africa).

Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>

In <1991May29.225523.10888@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:

>If you didn't catch them in your list, add Namibia
>to the nations on the net; I've exchanged email with
>a doctor who reads news there (feed is through South
>Africa).

No prizes, but have you collected the set? We also forward email
to Botswana, Kenya and Ethiopia (this latter is not so reliable
of late....). Goes via Fidonet, which is an excellent solution for
getting email reliably to low-tech places. Works pretty well for
high-techies also.

Mike
--
Mike Lawrie
Director Computing Services, Rhodes University, South Africa
.....................<ccml@hippo.ru.ac.za>..........................
Rhodes University condemns racism and racial segregation 

In <3506@laura.UUCP> rv@deins.Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Ruediger Volk) writes:
>Oh yes, a good telephone system is essential to modern business!

Can't agree more :-)

>But if you have a bad and overloaded one (and slow and unreliable postal
>service) there are cases were carrying some of communications by a computer
>networking service (using the bad phone system you have!) will give you 
>a leading edge; at least that's one of the lessons I learned from discussions
>with colleagues from Eastern Europe over the last year.

Our humble experience of running the biggest public computer network
in Soviet Union shows that there is a lot of possibilites to use
old technology to carry digital data. For example we're running stable
9600 bps links over copper wires leading via our phone exchange which
was installed in 1929 (Telebit's PEP modems, of course). V.22bis works
reasonably well over noisy lines but V.32 sucks.

I've got an impression that reasonable UUCP-based network could be
established everywhere in the world. Our current average delivery delays is
about four-five hours; we're working on reducing it by replacing
backbone links with 9600 bps IP links over IP lines.

Satellite technology is still expensive and therefore requires existing
domestic delivery nets to split the expenses. Still, we're looking
for new solutions in this field; for example one of the most advanced
Soviet projects suggests using of on-table flat satellite anttennas
(not dishes but phased antenna arrays (sp?)) providing sustained 9600 bps
througoutput. This project includes launching stationar satellite
covering Europe and practically the whole territory of Soviet Union and
producing about 15000 such devices a year. Technically it already
works, phinancial status is still unclear (in any case it'll be much
cheaper than existing Western satellite links). Currently it works
four hours a day via a military communicaton satellite.

INMARSAT is really expensive and cannot support permanent links with
sustained througoutput - it was designed to carry emergency information;
not the daily dataflow. (Ok, at the war time it's useful).

Ex-Eastern Bloc countries as a rule have rather advanced "closed"
communication systems which were used by communist party officials
and secret police services (like so-called "vertushka", the government
telephone system in SU). These systems tend to became commercially
available (for example ISKRA-2 in Moscow, the net of digital phone
exchanges intended to replace "vertushka", now it's the business phone
exchange). These phone networks are practically useless as means of
mass voice communications (there are only few "vertushka" phones
in each city) but can be quite useful for backbone UUCP or dial-up
IP links between regional e-mail nodes.

There are some industrial communication systems (like the one of Ministry
of Oil and Gas Industry); they could be used for computer communications
as well. HAM radio cannot be considered a vital alternative to surface
phone links due to small bandwidth and low reliability, the legal
status of such link in SU is unclear.

>This may seem strange - and needs and available infrastructure in third
>world countries may be different (and certainly vary) - but just consider
>your computer busy trying to establish a connection during all of the night
>to relay some messages...

It's usually much simplier - your computer forwards the message to
a city backbone over domestic phone system - usually it's simple and
does not consume lots of time; then the backbone delivers your message
using one of the ways I described before to other Soviet/Western backbone.
No need to dial through adverse long-distance links...

>Of course you need to have at least some parts of a wrotten phone system...

Hm. Are there any places without phone systems?

>The difference between former Eastern Block and third world often may be
>that the former usually has some internal infrastructure however wrotten
>but very bad international connectivity (quite bad even between the old allies)
>while the reverse maybe true for quite a number of third world countries.

Agreed (cannot say much about third world countries).

Anyway the main problem we got is the lack of qualified and initiative
people to establish regional nodes and keep them operating. Still
we found the huge demand for both international and domestic communications
(hm, we expected that the most part of e-mail traffic will be international
but now we have slightly bigger domestic traffic). The networking
society in SU didn't exist a half of a year ago and we have to spend
lots of time for missionarie activity - talking with people to make them
to break their own iron curtains and to open to the world. Amazing but
really tiring :-)

Cheers,

Vadim Antonov
DEMOS, Moscow, USSR