The Untapped Potential of Wi-Fi in Emergencies

[buzz]

When mobile networks collapse in natural disasters relief workers can be stranded. But German researchers say it's possible to tap domestic WiFi to create emergency mesh networks.

http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16183453,00.html

[Ben Mendis]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

To repeat the critique I posted to the Freedombox list:

The paper they refer to acknowledges the recent research into using
ad-hoc mesh networks as a backup communication system for emergency
responders. They assert that mesh node density may be insufficient in
certain geographic areas to maintain the necessary coverage of the mesh.

Based on this assertion, they are proposing that "at some point in the
future" an emergency switch would be implemented into all (or most?)
home routers such that the could be flipped from normal mode into an
emergency mesh network mode granting access to emergency responders.

They then proceed to use an Android wardriving app to collect data on
existing residential WiFi-enabled routers one neighborhood and make the
case that these routers would be capable of running the necessary
software to form a mesh network with consistent coverage of that
neighborhood.


Although the paper appears to be well-researched and well-written, I
think they focus too much on the wardriving aspect and trying to
establish the proliferation of privately owned WiFi equipment in a
particular urban neighborhood in a well-developed country. There is a
lot of important discussion which they seem to leave out of this paper.
They may have already addressed it in their previous paper, which they
reference several times, however I have not read that one.

Some of the issues I see, which I would have liked to see addressed
further:

1. Who has the authority to activate the emergency switch, and what
mechanisms prevent its abuse?

2. What mechanism is used to activate this emergency switch?

3. Who has access to make use of the mesh network after it has been
activated? The paper seems to imply that it would only be used by
emergency responders, but their methodology is to open it up such that
anyone would be able to connect and access the network.

4. How would the network be utilized in the absence of Internet access?
In the use case the authors describe, the mesh network is being
activiated because of a failure of traditional infrastructure, so it's
reasonable to assume that Internet access would be scare to impossible
in the region.

5. If traditional infrastructure is disrupted, that could include power
lines, how many of the residential routers they identified would still
be online if power was lost?


They seemed to focus at lot on wardriving using and Android app, but
wardriving is sooo last decade. Still, it's good to see validation of
our premise. This story seems to be really picking up, despite the lack
of implementation specifics, which implies that there is interest and
need for what we are building.

That's my two cents.

Best regards,
Ben the Pyrate

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Project Byzantium (Emergency Mesh Networking)" group.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/hacdc.org/d/msg/Byzantium/-/ES5swIhqzVkJ.
> To post to this group, send email to Byza...@hacdc.org.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to Byzantium+...@hacdc.org.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/a/hacdc.org/group/Byzantium/?hl=en.
>
>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJQNQW5AAoJEMco5sYyM+0wou0IAIzZTM7dfQh+D7zaCai4GIdy
2FHARFfZWK1zC3JGvJ8uAPtFEljdnR6VdhIGJzcoddLDQUTZqexk+4eaH6fNnFQe
7JMxFh5MmTTV0VBNkORCdACYmQlBvAVwfHyG5peOPybTVIVtHaLhDfTmCxqEOzvV
wA/vePoZwfd5y13BayBidCehuEhNf8BFt78tLV5rgJM3M4/xbTqOUlY/dy6kcncI
bdtRSgNP/hzFmQ4vSCwmnSohkyhmqR5sZUXQA6pXbk0vnQfGgMM6hgJ+svNFxeT1
vJU8pRGMhhARIKVTYW1kBU1xr7iQhpzsgWA33Ou9wBxsJg7ibqUE15uBfVuQbxE=
=F7tp
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[haxwithaxe]

while urban areas in developed countries aren't generally the most in
need of help in natural disasters they tend to be the hardest hit when
mother nature puts humanity in timeout. both the density of people and
the lack of local natural resources (read drinkable water and waste
removal) to alleviate the needs of that density of people requires much
more coordination and organization than in rural areas in the same
developed countries. everyone remembers new orleans and huston after
katrina and not the hundreds of miles of rural coastline that got hit in
the same storm for good reason.

that said, an emergency mesh switch on routers doesn't do any good if
the routers don't have a power source and not many people are likely
game for maintaining a backup battery for their home router or their
customers' home routers (checking them frequently and replacing them
every year or two).

there are routers that can run off of alkaline* batteries quite easily
with a barrel-plug wired to a battery holder. they are beginning to
become less common, but most of the verizon routers i have seen will
still run off them for a shorter while. this would rely on people having
enough batteries on hand as if they can get to a store the batteries
would run out pretty quickly normally and if lots of people are doing
the same thing they will probably run out even faster.

* AA,C,D cells all output 1.5 volts at varying max amperes the bigger
they are the longer they'll last. my fonera 1.0 could run for ~4hrs on
4AAs and it could probably do a full day of light duty on D cells
instead. running something like a router straight off such a wide range
of voltages can cause damage to the microprocessor though (as evinced by
my fon having only half it's ram addressable and the high running
temperature).