[HacDC:Byzantium] Some thoughts on the needs of users

[skyl4rk]

Assuming that Byzantium is started up in a group of laptop pc's in response 
to an emergency, I can see two cases of users:

A. Support Team and B. Victims.

The support team is airlifted into the disaster area and has a specific 
humanitarian aid task to perform.  Their needs are to communicate with each 
other, communicate with home base and to access relatively large pdf 
manuals, rules and procedures files for their organization.  They may need 
to communicate with local organizations or the local population using a pc 
but this is less likely in the initial aftermath.  They may need to order 
equipment and materials online via a web browser app.  In an emergency 
situation, high bandwidth internet is probably not available although the 
support team may have low bandwidth internet available to them (cell, 
satphone, packet radio).

For initial communication before there is any access to internet, I would 
recommend a webforum type application instead of IRC.  A forum allows for 
the creation of stickies and allows for searching of older posts.  More 
people are familiar with webforums than IRC.  IRC can work but there needs 
to be an instruction manual on how to use it.

For distributing large pdf files of manuals, rules and procedures, the 
options are to have one laptop serve all other users.  This is somewhat 
inefficient use of the servers bandwidth since is it probably also serving 
other applications.  I would suggest some type of torrent application so 
that any pc with even a piece of the document could serve parts of the 
document that is needed by all users.  Perhaps there could be a persistant 
directory that is set up so that any document that is saved there would be 
made available as a torrent to other users and the torrent program would 
automatically start upon boot from CD.

When internet is available, the ideal method of communication is by email.  
Ideally, each support team member would have a gmail account and access it 
over the internet.  I am assuming that an email server is too complicated 
to configure and set up.  This may not be correct.

A cell phone application similar to villagetelco.org (asterisk) could be 
very useful to allow the use of cell phones in the local area even if cell 
towers are not working.  This would allow the use of smartphones similar to 
walkie talkies, even if there were no connection outside of the local 
meshnet.

Support team services should be given priority and dedicated bandwidth.

Victim services.  The most important victim service during an emergency is 
health and welfare traffic.  Most of this traffic is family members calling 
in to the disaster area to try to find the status of loved ones.  In this 
case, when internet access is available, some kind of forum or bulletin 
board could be used to post questions, and those who have information can 
respond.  This should be set up in advance and hosted offsite.  Requests 
for information on family member status should be referred to this website.

Some health and welfare traffic is related to medical advice.  This should 
be given some type of priority and should be confidential.  Perhaps a 
private IRC channel is best for this.

There needs to be a way to allow some groups prioritized access to 
internet.  For example, there may be local government agencies that need an 
internet connection.  There needs to be a way to separate this traffic and 
allow it a prioritized access to the internet.  The Support Team needs 
prioritized access to the internet.

In some cases it may be desired to allow Byzantium to provide internet 
access to the public.  For many nonemergency uses, this is probably an 
important option.  For emergency services, it should be possible to limit 
the public's use of bandwidth so that critical communication has priority.

A thought about CDs versus USB sticks.  I think that only the laptops with 
server functions need USB sticks and persistent memory.  It is probably 
better in an emergency situation to limit the number of servers (USB 
sticks) but maximize the number of users (CD meshnodes).  Otherwise some 
users will click on buttons and make mistakes and set up unnecessary 
services, which would cause confusion.



-- 
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/-/E3CdL6x9Wx8J.
To post to this group, send email to Byzantium at hacdc.org.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to Byzantium+unsubscribe at hacdc.org.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/a/hacdc.org/group/Byzantium/?hl=en.


----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE