Internet DRAFT - draft-mahy-gaia-tools
draft-mahy-gaia-tools
GAIA RG R. Mahy
Internet-Draft (no affiliation)
Intended status: Informational December 1, 2014
Expires: June 4, 2015
Tools to accomplish the goals of GAIA (Global Access to the Internet for
All)
draft-mahy-gaia-tools-00.txt
Abstract
This document explores the central problem of the GAIA (Global Access
to the Internet for All) IRTF research group. It discusses several
possible approaches or tools that can be used to increase the number
of people with access to the Internet. Specifically we discuss how
these tools can improve reach, reduce cost, and improve the quality
of the Internet, especially in underserved areas.
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on June 4, 2015.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Recommended tools to improve Internet availability . . . . . 3
2.1. Encourage competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. Make services available with few barriers to entry . . . 4
2.3. Using existing copper or fiber more efficiently . . . . . 5
2.4. Adding more fiber (or sometimes copper) . . . . . . . . . 5
2.5. Using existing wireless spectrum more efficiently . . . . 5
2.6. Adding wireless connectivity where there is no service at
all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.6.1. Terrestrial wireless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.6.2. Near-earth wireless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.6.3. Geosynchronous satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.7. Replacing (geosynchronous) satellite with lower latency
services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.8. Increasing access to electricity . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.9. Data mule services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.10. Replacing above ground wired services with underground
wired services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.11. Peering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3. Which actors can use which tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. To Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
7. Informational References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1. Introduction
GAIA aims to increase availability of access to the Internet. The
author will discuss a number of tools available to different actors
to accomplish this goal. For each tool, the author will consider
three related attributes of availability: reach, cost, and quality.
Reach is which members of a population could access the Internet via
various approaches. Reach is not just a technical characteristic.
Services which have various administrative requirements (ex: long-
term contracts, legal residency, requirements for certain forms of
identity) also restrict reach. Cost is the overall cost to the end-
user for the services they would like to use. It includes upfront
and recurring subscription or usage costs. Quality is related to the
useful throughput for the services the end-user would like to use.
Factors affecting quality include bandwidth capacity, latency,
jitter, congestion, loss, and the reliability (downtime) of the
service. The author will also consider which actors has the ability
to implement which of these tools.
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2. Recommended tools to improve Internet availability
2.1. Encourage competition
History has shown that Internet markets with lots of providers are
robust, healthy, and provide a full range of services and prices,
including very affordable basic service. By contrast, markets with
monopolies or duopolies tend to experience high prices and often poor
quality. This is not uniquely a problem in developing countries.
For example, at the time of this writing most residences in the
United States only have access to a single cable TV provider and a
single telephone provider for Internet access. Relative to other
countries at a similar level of development, residential Internet
access is among the most expensive and slowest among other rich
countries. One area where competition has dramatically lowered cost
quite suddenly is in access to ocean-going fiber. Where some markets
(much of West and Southern Africa, Haiti) went from a single fiber
landing with access to the Internet to more than one, the costs
dropped by at least an order of magnitude in a few years.
Encouraging competition is about removing unnatural or unnecessary
barriers to new entrants. This is not to say that telecommunications
should be completely unregulated. Every form of wired or wireless
Internet access needs to use some kind public resource (e.g. travel
over public land or a public right of way, or transmit
electromagnetic waves). In a competitive market this use is
regulated to encourage fair access to established providers and new
entrants alike, including non-commercial providers. The various
approaches described as "Alternative Network Deployments" in
[I-D.manyfolks-gaia-community-networks] all effectively offer an
alternative to one or more "traditional" service providers and
therefore are an additional form of competition.
A regulator can further implement policies that encourage providers
to extend access into new or underserved areas rather than providing
service in a location that already has several competitive providers.
Two ways are to increase the cost of the spectrum or right-of-way in
well-served areas, or to allow no new permits if there is capacity
available from a neutral service or provider or from a certain number
of providers (ex: four or more). For wireless services, allowing
providers (private or community) in underserved areas to use
frequencies without having to buy a country-wide license is
especially effective at encouraging expansion of range. The use of
dynamic spectrum (ex: TV white spaces, dynamic allocation of GSM
frequencies) is a logical extension of this approach and looks
particularly promising.
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In many developing countries, there is a lack of good information
about the size of the market in underserved areas. For example, in a
regional capital you may have 3 or 4 mobile network operators
offering service, but in a nearby small city you may find no service
at all. Rather than use available capital to extend service into a
new area, operators often add capacity in an existing area, because
they can perform a break-even analysis with relatively low risk. One
of the advantages of community-based approaches in serving a new area
is that their goal is usually to serve a specific community at a
reasonable cost rather than to select the most profitable or least
risky project among many possible choices. The community is also in
a better position to estimate the eventual usage than typical
outsiders.
In summary, once a market becomes competitive, cost drops and quality
improves. Reach usually improves somewhat slowly in the worst case,
but this can be helped along considerably with appropriate policy
choices, by allowing flexible or dynamic allocation of frequencies,
and by encouraging communities to deploy their own networks.
2.2. Make services available with few barriers to entry
In many developing countries, anyone can buy an inexpensive mobile
phone with basic Internet access and pre-pay for a "bucket" of
bandwidth or unlimited Internet by the day, week, or month at very
affordable rates. (Sadly this is not usually true in some rich
countries.) By contrast, purchasing broadband Internet access may
have several barriers.
For example Internet service may require filling out and signing a
contract, possibly in a language that is not widely spoken by certain
groups or economic classes. It may require having an official
address or some form of official identification which is difficult or
impossible for some segments of the population to obtain. For
example, contracts in Haiti are typically in French even though the
vast majority of the population are not able to read a complex
document in French. Some large neighborhoods in India were built
without permits and are therefore ineligible for addresses. In some
countries, identity cards are routinely denied to certain ethnic
groups. Services with these requirements are effectively out of
reach of a large segment of the population.
Finally, if a service requires a large deposit, the purchase of
expensive equipment, or a recurring financial commitment, this will
affect the overall cost of the service and could exclude a large
number of potential subscribers who could otherwise afford the normal
usage or subscription costs most of the time.
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2.3. Using existing copper or fiber more efficiently
This approach can reduce the cost and/or increase the quality
(specifically bandwidth) of Internet links over existing copper pairs
or fiber strands. For fiber, migrating TDM, SRP, FDDI or even SONET
to Ethernet often increases the available capacity considerably. For
copper, migrating POTS, ISDN, TDM, or DSL links to Ethernet or faster
forms of DSL can also increase available capacity, but usually with
slightly more effort. Ordinary POTS lines are typically not well
conditioned, so copper may need to be touched at several points
before it is ready to use.
2.4. Adding more fiber (or sometimes copper)
Fiber is a good long-term solution to improve the capacity and
reliability of Internet services along a path. It can also be very
cost effective if there is a competitive market for using the fiber.
New fiber or copper can be deployed along a route or to a destination
with no (non-satellite) Internet connectivity at all, it can replace
an existing wireless link, or it can be an upgrade or replacement of
an existing copper or fiber link. Replacing an existing congested
terrestrial wireless link is often an especially good investment, as
the wireless equipment can be redeployed to a location that has no
connectivity at all.
2.5. Using existing wireless spectrum more efficiently
Unlicensed spectrum (typically the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz Industrial
Scientific and Medical bands) in populated areas can become quite
crowded. Best practices include using directional antennas for
point-to-point links and reducing the transmit power when possible.
Cellular telephones use a limited number of licensed frequencies
which are typically allocated to mobile network operators on a per-
country basis. Upgrading cellular data protocols from GPRS or EDGE
to 3G improves the bandwidth efficiency. In areas with high usage,
reducing the size of each cell improves density and bandwidth
efficiency. These both improve the quality of available Internet.
In areas with no cellular service, providing a new allocation to a
community or provider without a nationwide license, or allowing them
to reuse the frequencies of one or more nationwide cellular providers
in the unserved area would allow for a tremendous improvement in
reach.
In many developing countries there are relatively few broadcast
television stations (often between 2 and 4), but a large amount of
bandwidth is reserved for their potential use. TV White Spaces
offers the opportunity to use the bandwidth on unoccupied channels
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for networking purposes. As frequencies for WiFi, WiMax, and similar
wireless services are extremely limited, TV White Spaces can
potentially offer lots of additional bandwidth for data services in a
part of the wireless spectrum with excellent propagation
characteristics. In general, dynamic frequency allocation could make
a number of frequencies available to offer services in underserved
regions.
2.6. Adding wireless connectivity where there is no service at all
2.6.1. Terrestrial wireless
Some form of Internet access is currently available in the following
radio bands: High Frequency (HF, 3Mhz to 30Mhz), Very High Frequency
(VHF, 30Mhz to 300Mhz), Ultra High Frequency (UHF, 300Mhz to 3Ghz),
and Super High Frequency (SHF, 3Ghz to 30 Ghz). Each of these bands
has different propagation characteristics.
Many HF frequencies are reflected by the ionosphere and can easily
travel hundreds or thousands of kilometers. The amount of reflection
varies depending on the time of day and season and can be subject to
substantial interference. Unfortunately this band offers very low
bandwidth and generally requires quite large antennas. It is the
only terrestrial option for a user without line of sight who is
hundreds or several tens of kilometers away from the nearest Internet
access. Fortunately these regions are relatively few, primarily in
open ocean, deserts, steppe, polar regions, and parts of central
Africa.
VHF frequencies and the lower UHF frequencies generally travel
slightly further than line of sight. They are frequently diffracted
by hills and buildings. SHF and the higher UHF frequencies generally
require near line of sight for reliable transmission. In general,
the higher the frequency, the more bandwidth is available and the
shorter the effective range.
Terrestrial wireless solutions include cellular data, WiFi, WiMax, TV
White spaces, and packet radio (the last typically used for marine
communication and by hobbyists).
2.6.2. Near-earth wireless
Several solutions have been proposed and deployed as trials where
stations on the ground communicate with balloons, drones, or low-
earth orbit satellites. These non-terrestrial signals still have a
negligible latency relative to geosynchronous satellites (e.g.
approximately 4ms round trip to the Iridium constellation of low-
earth orbit satellites).
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Balloons and Low-earth orbit satellites are launched once for the
duration of their service life. Most uses of drones assumes that
they will periodically return to earth for servicing. While this
offers the possibility to easily upgrade telecommunications gear
there is a long-term logistical element required for their use. One
disadvantage of drones in some regions is their association with
surveillance or military activities (including lethal action). The
author observed that in South Sudan, the sound of particular aircraft
will cause everyone to drop whatever they are doing and run for the
bush.
Each of these solutions requires a rather large upfront investment,
but depending on the size of the target service area, population
density and difficulty of the terrain may still be more cost
effective than terrestrial solutions. For example, low-earth
satellites likely offer the best price-performance in ocean and polar
regions. Balloons could offer a good balance of price-performance in
sparsely population desert regions. Drones (if culturally
appropriate) or tethered balloons could supplement capacity in
disaster areas or dense refugee settings.
2.6.3. Geosynchronous satellites
Traditional geosynchronous bidirectional Internet (typically via VSAT
or BGAN) is still the option of last resort for businesses or
organizations in locations with no terrestrial broadband service and
slow, unreliable or non-existent cellular data. BGANs are mobile and
offer connectivity from practically anywhere outside with a view of
the sky. (Geosynchronous satellites are not accessible from the
polar regions.)
Unfortunately these service are relatively hard to setup, expensive
to setup, and in places where they are most needed are often
expensive to use. In addition, for some of their plans many
providers place a cap (called a "Fair Access Policy" or FAP) on the
maximum amount of bandwidth that can be consumed over some period of
time (typically one month or one week). When this cap is reached the
effective bandwidth drops well below 8kbps.
Unidirectional satellite access can provide bulk data or broadcasting
to a large number of ground stations simultaneously. This could
include for example educational content, entertainment, news, and
software updates. In some cases, the subscriber can propose or
subscribe to specific content using an out-of-band Internet
connection.
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2.7. Replacing (geosynchronous) satellite with lower latency services
Traditional bidirectional satellite Internet services (ex: VSAT or
BGAN) use geosynchronous satellites which add a round-trip delay of
at least 480 to 558ms to every packet. For interactive usage (ex:
web browsing) or real-time communication the delay is especially
bothersome. Likewise, cellular towers in remote areas often use a
geosynchronous satellite for backhaul. (A call from between such
towers will have a minimum delay of at least 1 second.) This
attribute affects the quality of the connection.
As of this writing there were a handful of reasonably affordable (ex:
around $100) satellite bidirectional Internet access options
available in the United States. By comparison a similar speed
satellite service in the Democratic Republic of Congo might cost ten
times as much. Why is there such a discrepancy? Providers of
satellite Internet service know that their service is often a choice
of last resort. In countries with poor or expensive Internet access
the Internet provider can raise the price of their service
substantially. Because there is no or very little competition they
know that the market will bear a much higher price for the same
service.
Also, the regulator in each country usually collects fees for the use
of satellites. If the service provider charges a lot for their
service, chances are the regulator will charge a lot too, and that
will be passed along to the end-user.
2.8. Increasing access to electricity
In many developing countries, power from an electrical grid is not
widely available outside of large cities. Where a cellular network
exists but the typical individual user does not have electricity,
mobile phone users may leave their telephones with the guard of a the
cellular tower or with a local entrepreneur for charging.
When setting up new wireless links in remote locations, the cost of
providing power (either via a generator or solar system) usually
exceeds the cost of the networking or cellular equipment. The author
also lived in a town where the local cellular service was turned off
at night to conserve fuel for the generator.
A reliable source of electricity for cellular towers, community WiFi,
etc. decreases the cost of providing those services and often
increases the quality (reliability) of services that would otherwise
run on generators. Power availability for users allows end users to
keep mobile devices with them more often and makes it practical to
use more powerful and larger devices which consume more power.
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In the absence of grid power, the extent to which both networking and
end-user equipment (ex: computers, tablet, or phones) consume less
power has a huge effect on their possible reach.
2.9. Data mule services
When there is no permanent Internet connectivity in a community, but
regular transportation between a connected town and the community, a
specially configured computer or even tablet can shuttle data back
and forth between the two locations. Currently this is a very low
cost solution but requires a lot of very technical setup and
installation.
While data mule services alone provide perhaps the worst user
experience and fail to provide the interactivity of the Internet,
they can help prove a demand for Internet which can help with a
business case for community-based or traditional provider, or justify
a subsidy or grant. Users can also supplement very slow interactive
Internet connectivity with data mule services for bulk data.
2.10. Replacing above ground wired services with underground wired
services
Moving services running on copper or fiber from poles to buried coper
or fiber (typically in conduit) generally improves the reliability of
those services. Cables on poles are generally more susceptible to
storm and earthquake damage, damage from vehicles, vandalism and
theft.
2.11. Peering
(Border Gateway Protocol [BGP]) Peering among service providers
(typically in a country or region) decreases the cost of Internet
access by reducing the amount of money spent by each provider on
transit outside the area, and improves the quality by reducing
latency.
3. Which actors can use which tools
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+----------------------------+----------+------+-----------+-------+
| Tool | Regulat. | ISPs | Community | Users |
+----------------------------+----------+------+-----------+-------+
| Encourage competition | x | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Fewer barriers | x | x | x | n/a |
| Make wired more efficient | n/a | x | x | n/a |
| Add new fiber/copper | n/a | x | n/a | n/a |
| More efficient wireless | n/a | x | x | x |
| Add terrestrial wireless | n/a | x | x | n/a |
| Deploy Near-earth wireless | n/a | x | unlikely | n/a |
| Use Geosync satellite | n/a | x | x | x |
| Replace (geo) satellite | n/a | x | x | x |
| Improve Electricity | x | x | x | x |
| Data mule services | n/a | n/a | x | x |
| Move wires underground | n/a | x | n/a | n/a |
| Peering | n/a | x | n/a | n/a |
+----------------------------+----------+------+-----------+-------+
4. Security Considerations
As this document is concerned primarily with policy or layer 1 and 2,
many of the traditional topics discussed in a Security Considerations
section are not relevant. However, in a future version of this
document we can explore how difference choices affect pervasive
monitoring, privacy, and denial of service.
5. IANA Considerations
This document requests no action by IANA.
6. To Do
Add a lot of references.
Add discussion of security.
7. Informational References
[I-D.manyfolks-gaia-community-networks]
Saldana, J., Arcia-Moret, A., Braem, B., Navarro, L.,
Pietrosemoli, E., Rey-Moreno, C., Sathiaseelan, A., and M.
Zennaro, "Alternative Network Deployments. Taxonomy and
characterization", draft-manyfolks-gaia-community-
networks-01 (work in progress), October 2014.
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Author's Address
Rohan Mahy
(no affiliation)
PO Box 441
Santa Cruz, CA
USA
Email: rohan.ietf@gmail.com
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