[HacDC:Byzantium] Some thoughts on the needs of users
skyl4rk
skyl4rk at gmail.com
Wed Jul 25 19:09:00 PDT 2012
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.
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