Serval Mesh Extenders / Crowd-funding campaign

[Paul Gardner-Stephen]

Hi All,

As some of you may already be aware we have been working on what we call the Mesh Extender at the Serval Project.

The Mesh Extender is a combined battery powered embedded Linux router and UHF packet radio running the Serval Mesh software (which is all GPL, see github.com/servalproject for the source).

It is intended for mobile and truly ad-hoc deployment where the end user just turns it on and uses it.

The idea is that it uses the UHF packet radio to mesh over greater distances than is possible with Wi-Fi, the trade-off being lower bandwidth.  

While not a substitute for "real" networks, it is fully distributed and resilient, and has the potential to be a powerful backup communications capability for when the "real" networks are down, congested, or have never existed.

In general, we find that the UHF packet radio has a range of about 10x that of Wi-Fi when deployed indoors with omni-directional antennae. This means it has a range of about a block in a suburban or urban setting compared with Wi-Fi's range of about one house or apartment.

The necessity of a portable and trivial to deploy enabler of mesh communications, and the need for this to be completely open, has led us to the current point where we have setup a crowd funding campaign to develop this technology, taking it from the prototype stage and to develop an actual manufacturable product, and do further testing with our humanitarian partners.

This is the point that our campaign at igg.me/at/speakfreely will take us to if fully funded.

But to realise the full potential of this we not only need to make an attractive manufacturable device, but also to improve the open-source firmware of the packet radios we are using to support true "ad-hoc packet radio" within the complex regulatory requirements of the ISM 915MHz band, in particular the need to frequency hop which presents interesting technical challenges for a fully distributed mesh that does not rely on GPS timing for synchronisation.

Achieving "ad-hoc packet radio" will require us to not only meet our current funding goal, but stretch it by a factor of two.

We are conscious that achieving this will require promoting the campaign far and wide, possibly wider than the Serval team can achieve alone.

Therefore it would be tremendously helpful if as many of you as are willing and able would assist us in spreading the word as far and wide as possible. We would love to get slash-dotted and reddited off the net. Repeatedly.

So please take a look at our campaign, use the words below if they are helpful, and help us to get the word out, and ultimately let's make effective and private long-range mesh communications not only possible, but practical and easy for the general public so that they can enjoy the resilient backup communications capability that they need to keep connected, no matter what disaster may befall them.

Obviously we also welcome any volunteer contributors on any aspect of the Serval Project as we work together to make mobile communications available when and wherever it is needed, so that people can speak freely, even during a disaster or in the middle of nowhere.

Thanks in advance,

Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen
Founder, Serval Project.

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Serval crowd-funding Mesh Extenders to make mesh & disaster telephony go the next mile http://igg.me/at/speakfreely

Serval Project has been working for three years with New Zealand Red Cross on free and open technology, called the Serval Mesh, which can keep mobile phones operating when mobile networks fail, such as during disasters. We now want to take this technology out of the lab and get it into peoples hands. Find out more at http://igg.me/at/speakfreely

Twitter: @ServalProject
Campaign: http://igg.me/at/speakfreely
G+: http://gplus.to/serval
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/servalproject
web: http://servalproject.org

[realcr]

Hey Paul,
Respect for the project.

I am interested to know more about the protocol being used above the hardware layer. Mostly I want to know how freeriders are being dealt with.

Is there some kind of economy or system of incentives to make sure users contribute to the network about at least as much as they take from it? I think it's an important question.

I assume you dedicated some time to think about those questions. Could you tell in short how do you deal with it, or refer to some document related to that? I looked in the website but I didn't manage to find one easily.

Thank you for your help, and for your contribution to freedom,

real.

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[Paul Gardner-Stephen]

Hello,

On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 7:12 AM, realcr <rea...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey Paul,
Respect for the project. 

I am interested to know more about the protocol being used above the hardware layer. Mostly I want to know how freeriders are being dealt with.

Is there some kind of economy or system of incentives to make sure users contribute to the network about at least as much as they take from it? I think it's an important question.

I assume you dedicated some time to think about those questions. Could you tell in short how do you deal with it, or refer to some document related to that? I looked in the website but I didn't manage to find one easily.

Some technical detail is available at developer.servalproject.org/wiki, but we do need to document even more.

As for the free-rider problem, where people only consume instead of helping deliver data, we have given this some thought.  But to be honest, we haven't put a huge amount of effort into this to date, as our focus has been on proving the ability to relay data, but we agree that it is an important social problem.  

At the pragmatic level, there is no switch to turn off relaying of traffic but stay on the network, so it would need someone to make a special version of the software.

The Serval Mesh software includes the capability to update itself over the mesh, so even if someone does make a custom version, it would be a bit of a nuisance for them to maintain it or for people to use it, since they will miss out on updates to the software.  This is all the more true if we are able to make the Mesh Extenders, as it will take some extra effort for them to replace the software on those (although it will of course be possible as it will be an open hardware platform), but someone has to really want to do it.

Also, we expect that a major use case will be relatively small communities who have a vested interest in cooperating.

But we do welcome contributors who would like to work on this (or any other aspect) of the Serval Mesh.  

 

Thank you for your help, and for your contribution to freedom,

Thank you for your kind words.

Paul.

 

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