A Big Phoney Mesh

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A Big Phoney Mesh

• The Problem
• Village Telco
• Mesh Potato
• Lets make a VT!
• Status
• Links
• Questions

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Demo What you need to know

• Default IP eth0 192.168.1.20
• Change Wifi to 10.130.1.xxx
• You MP01's Phone Number is then xxx

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The Problem
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June 2008 Workshop
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Village Telco and Cell Phones

• Call Cost
• Community Approach
• Unlicensed Spectrum
• Infrastructure cost and availability
• Cell Phone networks don't scale down
• Capital (it's not just the handsets)
• Walled gardens versus the Internet

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Mesh Potato

• POT-ATA
• USD60

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Mesh Potato Design

• Low Cost
• B.A.T.M.A.N mesh routing
• lt 400m between nodes, omni antennas
• Maximise open hardware and software
• OpenWRT
• FXS port interface
• Low Power Africanisation

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Challenges

• Atheros Support
• CPU Load
• FXS Port Integration
• Hardware and a Multi-national team
• RF, Wifi Calibration, Antenna
• 802.11 MAC overheads for small VOIP packets
• Ease of use

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Custom Wifi/VOIP Hardware

• Not a re-flash of existing hardware
• Custom, mass market product designed by an open
  community!
• Open Hardware (schematic, CPLD, uC firmware)
• Open Software
• Very hackable
• Development blog villagetelco.org
• Many 1st world applications

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Status

• It works! First phone call June 2009
• Cool developer community
• Beta Release Jan 2010 (this week!)
• Production Q2 2010
• Current Challenges
• real world performance (tech and biz)
• system integration
• ease of use

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Links

• villagetelco.org
• Village Telco Google Group
• rowetel.com