Re: [gaia] Comments on: draft-irtf-gaia-alternative-network-deployments

[Arjuna Sathiaseelan <[e-mail]>]

Regarding the questionnaire -

Bart and Leandro - did some work on this before cited in the draft:
Avonts, J., Braem, B., and C. Blondia, "A Questionnaire based Examination
of Community Networks", Proceedings Wireless and Mobile Computing,
Networking and Communications (WiMob), 2013 IEEE 8th International
Conference on (pp. 8-15) , 2013.

So would you be able to give us some examples of how you forsee what we
should have asked?
Regards

On 11 April 2016 at 22:04, Arjuna Sathiaseelan <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hello Mitar -
>
> So the first point I am trying to understand is when you said CNs are not
> represented properly and we are biased from our understanding/working with
> a CN like Guifi - how does a CN like Guifi differ from the points you are
> raising:
>
>  "free sharing of Internet connectivity, altruism
> - various forms of activism (network neutrality guarantees,
> anti-censorship, decentralization to minimize control, showing that
> alternative is possible)
> - building a new type of commons
> - not being just a consumer, but active participant, wanting to have a
> say in operations
> - provide local services to local people, tighten/reconnect the
> community (eg. http://tidepools.co/)
> - provide alternative service in case of natural disasters and other
> extreme situations
> - wanting to have a space for experimentation and teaching of others,
> empowering others to take their Internet connectivity into their own
> hands"
>
> Isnt a CN like Guifi doing exactly this?
>
> Are you saying that a specific section is not written correctly or are you
> saying the whole document does not illustrate the points you have raised.
> My confusion comes from this.
>
> regards
>
>
> On 10 April 2016 at 19:53, Mitar <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> I am participant in the open wireless network in Slovenia, wlan
>> slovenija (https://wlan-si.net/) and I am writing to provide some
>> feedback on the draft. I am glad people are working on it. My list of
>> comments is in no particular order, mostly in order of reading. I am
>> sorry if this will be long, but there are many issues with the draft.
>>
>> Section 4.2. I think this is a very limited set of motivations. From
>> our network and from my experience talking to other community
>> networks, I would claim that many share also much more altruistic
>> motivations. For example, our whole network is build around principle
>> that some of us have abundance of Internet connectivity at home
>> (FTTH), so we can share part of that openly with everyone. More of us
>> will share it, more people will have access to Internet. Of course
>> there are other motivations why people participate, and everyone has a
>> different mix of those motivations, but I definitely think that the
>> list should be extended to include:
>>
>> - free sharing of Internet connectivity, altruism
>> - various forms of activism (network neutrality guarantees,
>> anti-censorship, decentralization to minimize control, showing that
>> alternative is possible)
>> - building a new type of commons
>> - not being just a consumer, but active participant, wanting to have a
>> say in operations
>> - provide local services to local people, tighten/reconnect the
>> community (eg. http://tidepools.co/)
>> - provide alternative service in case of natural disasters and other
>> extreme situations
>> - wanting to have a space for experimentation and teaching of others,
>> empowering others to take their Internet connectivity into their own
>> hands
>>
>> An example of another network describing itself with much more of what
>> I am writing than what is currently on the list:
>> https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh
>>
>> All those are goals and motivations (and those are just few I
>> remembered without much thinking) for many community networks. I do
>> not think the list in section 4.2 can ever be comprehensive, but I was
>> really taken aback from its economy-centric bias at the moment. Most
>> community networks do not operate on that level. It is of course
>> present, but there are some other primary motivations why people are
>> doing it.
>>
>> Section 4.4, technologies employed:
>>
>> "Low-cost optical fiber systems are used to connect households in some
>> villages."
>>
>> Isn't this section about list of technologies? Why are those villages
>> mentioned? Optical systems can also be used elsewhere.
>>
>> Moreover, in wlan slovenija we developed free optics free-space (no
>> fiber) system Koruza (http://koruza.net/), which are useful especially
>> in high-density urban environments because of no interference.
>>
>> Section 4.5, typical scenarios:
>>
>> I do not see usefulness of this categorization, because almost any
>> network I know of outgrow and changed through time inside all these
>> categories. Community networks maybe start somewhere (like urban or
>> rural area), but then they grow and spread over the whole country,
>> then start connecting with other countries.
>>
>> Section 5, classification of alternative networks:
>>
>> Introduction again focuses on incentives. That is a very limited
>> perspective. I would claim that most alternative networks go beyond
>> just incentives, but exist because of various beliefs: about how
>> networks should operate, who should have control over them, the
>> importance of commons and community stewardship of commons, etc.
>>
>> Section 5.1, community networks:
>>
>> As I explained, goals and motivation here seems a pretty limited list
>> and I think you should include at least ones I listed above. But
>> probably you should do a survey and ask community networks what are
>> their goals and motivations, instead of trying to guess them. (If you
>> have done such a survey, I would love to see data.)
>>
>> Technologies used: TDMA should be there, Ubiquiti gear does it by default.
>>
>> Typical scenarios: all
>>
>> Community Networks are large-scale: not necessary, they can also be
>> small, city only. Some are large scale, some are small, some are
>> focused on one region, some are distributed around larger region,
>> connected with VPN together.
>>
>> "There is a shared platform (e.g.  a web site) where a minimum
>> coordination is performed.  This way, community members with the right
>> permissions have an obvious and direct form of organizational control
>> over the overall operation of the network (e.g.  IP addresses,
>> routing, etc.) in their community (not just their own participation in
>> the network)."
>>
>> This can be true, but it is not necessary so. There are community
>> networks with much larger focus on decentralization. Especially with
>> IPv6 a lot more autoconfiguraiton is possible.
>>
>> Also, phrase "this way" is strange in this context. I do not see how
>> control over the routing of the network has anything with the
>> existence of the shared platform? In wlan slovenija network we also
>> use a web shared platform, but that platform does not control the
>> network. It just helps in coordination. Network would operate even
>> without it, just people would have a bit harder time coordinate about
>> use of IP space, and learning how to configure their nodes.
>>
>> So having a shared platform can have very little to do with how core
>> network's resources (IP addresses, routings, peerings, DNS entries,
>> etc.) are managed.
>>
>> "A Community Network is a network in which any participant in the
>> system may add link segments to the network in such a way that the new
>> segments can support multiple nodes and adopt the same overall
>> characteristics as those of the joined network, including the capacity
>> to further extend the network.  Once these link segments are joined to
>> the network, there is no longer a meaningful distinction between the
>> previous and the new extent of the network."
>>
>> Isn't this definition of the Internet? Just replace "segment" with
>> "autonomous system" and "community network" with "Internet". :-)
>>
>> So what exactly is the property which differentiates community
>> networks? Maybe there is none. Maybe community networks are simply
>> trying to (re)build the Internet, but this time having infrastructure
>> owned by participants, which are not just consumers, but are
>> participating.
>>
>> I think this is the most important characteristic. Organic growth, and
>> that people own the equipment, and thus the emergent network. This
>> should be more clearly explained. So it is not so much about
>> technology in community networks, but about who owns and controls
>> equipment (people/users/participants), and who coordinates the network
>> growth (people/users/participants). The line between users, providers,
>> participants, people gets blurred.
>>
>> "In Community Networks, everybody keeps the ownership of what he/she
>> has contributed.
>>
>> Not necessary. They can also give it away (for example equipment for
>> backbone nodes). In general, mostly people do not really track
>> ownership of equipment, because they do not care about ownership if it
>> is operating according to common principles. And if it is not, it
>> should not be in the network no matter who owns the equipment.
>>
>> Section 5.4, crowdshared approaches, led by the users and third party
>> stakeholders
>>
>> "VNOs pay the sharers and the network operators, thus creating an
>> incentive structure for all the actors: the end users get money for
>> sharing their network, the network operators are paid by the VNOs, who
>> in turn accomplish their socio-environmental role."
>>
>> I am not sure if all networks which can be grouped under this section
>> really do that. In the draft itself the https://openwireless.org/
>> movement is listed, but no shares or money or any incentive structure
>> is in place there for people to share their extra Internet
>> connectivity.
>>
>> So I would change this paragraph to:
>>
>> "VNOs can be organized to pay the sharers and the network operators,
>> thus creating an incentive structure for all the actors: the end users
>> get money for sharing their network, the network operators are paid by
>> the VNOs, who in turn accomplish their socio-environmental role. But
>> VNOs can also operate on gift-economy principles, where participants
>> contribute to the commons by sharing their resources knowing that this
>> benefits all."
>>
>> Section 6.2.1,  Media Access Control (MAC) protocols for wireless links
>>
>> "Wireless standards ensure interoperability and usability to those who
>> design, deploy and manage wireless networks."
>>
>> Wireless standard ensure low-cost of equipment due to economies of
>> scale and mass production. This is the main reason I think why WiFi is
>> so popular in alternative networks. You can get a device for $10. And
>> you can get this because everyone is producing this hardware, and the
>> hardware is not just made for the alternative networks. In contrast,
>> traditional ISPs use hardware which is developed only for them. Even
>> if they are big ISP, number of units is still much smaller than number
>> of WiFi routers produced for the global market.
>>
>> Question about list of WiFi standards in this draft. Why is that
>> needed? Why properties and descriptions of those standards should be
>> in this draft? They belong to Wikipedia, or their own standard. In
>> this draft we can just reference those standards. Like what of all
>> this text is relevant to alternative networks? It is general text
>> which is true for any use:
>>
>> "802.22 [IEEE.802-22.2011] is a standard developed specifically for
>> long range rural communications in TV white space frequencies and
>> first approved in July 2011. The standard is similar to the 802.16
>> (WiMax) [IEEE.802-16.2008] standard with an added cognitive radio
>> ability. The maximum throughput of 802.22 is 22.6 Mbps for a single 8
>> MHz channel using 64-QAM modulation. The achievable range using the
>> default MAC scheme is 30 km, however 100 km is possible with special
>> scheduling techniques. The MAC of 802.22 is specifically customized
>> for long distances - for example, slots in a frame destined for more
>> distant Consumer Premises Equipment (CPEs) are sent before slots
>> destined for nearby CPEs.
>>
>> Base stations are required to have a Global Positioning System (GPS)
>> and a connection to the Internet in order to query a geolocation
>> spectrum database. Once the base station receives the allowed TV
>> channels, it communicates a preferred operating white space TV channel
>> with the CPE devices. The standard also includes a coexistence
>> mechanism that uses beacons to make other 802.22 base stations aware
>> of the presence of a base station that is not part of the same
>> network."
>>
>> Section 7.1.2.2, mesh routing protocols
>>
>> "A large number of Alternative Networks use the Optimized Link State
>> Routing Protocol (OLSR) as defined in [RFC3626]."
>>
>> Not really. Networks use OLSR as implemented by http://olsr.org/,
>> which is far from the standardized OLSR in RFC3626. For example, in
>> practice, ETX metric is used, which is not even mentioned in RFC3626.
>>
>> Also Babel should definitely be mentioned, it is used in many
>> networks, and it is even (properly) standardized as RFC6126. So if you
>> want to include a routing protocol for alternative networks with IETF
>> standard, you should include this one for sure.
>>
>> Section 7.2.1, traffic management when sharing network resources
>>
>> It is interesting that so many people believe that there have to be
>> some special prioritization done for sharers to be able to use APs.
>> But it is not necessary true. Often people connecting to open AP nodes
>> will be much further away from the AP than the sharer. So often just
>> this distance already influences that the users of open network are
>> prioritized less (they have higher packet loss, lower bitrate, which
>> is also good to limit the lowest allowed bitrate).
>>
>> In community networks is also pretty common to run the network itself
>> on different frequencies than the APs. Some first generation mesh
>> networks ran everything (backbone over ad-hoc) and client-serving APs
>> on the same channel, but with 5 GHz spectrum and cheap dual-band
>> devices this is often separated now.
>>
>> Section 7.3., services provided
>>
>> What is this section? A non-comprehensive list of services on the
>> Internet and networks in general? This looks pretty useless section
>> which would not inform anyone reading this draft of anything about
>> alternative networks.
>>
>> If something, then it would be interesting to talk about specialized
>> services developed just for community/alternative networks:
>>
>> - Inter-network peering/VPNs: https://wiki.freifunk.net/IC-VPN
>> - Local wikis like: https://localwiki.org
>> - Community oriented portals: http://tidepools.co/
>> - Network monitoring/deployment/maintenance platforms
>> - VoIP sharing between networks, allowing cheap calls between countries
>> - Sensor networks and citizen science build by adding sensors to devices
>> - Community radio/TV stations
>>
>> What is interesting that some networks do not even provide Internet
>> access. For example, in Croatia, historically, there were wireless
>> communities which made networks in villages just to be able to play
>> games.
>>
>> Section 7.3.2.1, web browsing proxies
>>
>> "Other services (file sharing, VoIP, etc.) are not usually allowed in
>> many Alternative Networks due to bandwidth limitations."
>>
>> That would go against net neutrality and anti-censorship principles
>> which are important in many other alternative networks. So the
>> question how informative this sentence is, because for some maybe this
>> is true, for some it is not, and some probably are build just around
>> this. Others probably address this with innovative solutions like
>> internal file servers.
>>
>> At the end, a general question, how would DIY ISPs
>> (https://www.diyisp.org/) be categorized according to this draft? To
>> me is unclear.
>>
>> Some more projects to look into, and think how they relate to this draft:
>>
>> https://rhizomatica.org/
>> http://www.servalproject.org/
>> http://villagetelco.org/
>>
>>
>> Mitar
>>
>> --
>> http://mitar.tnode.com/
>> https://twitter.com/mitar_m
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Arjuna Sathiaseelan
> Personal: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/
> N4D Lab: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/n4d
>



-- 
Arjuna Sathiaseelan
Personal: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/
N4D Lab: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/n4d