An IP Standard for Zambia
After a frustrating day yesterday at ZICTBF we decided to take a look at both the recommended and experimental standards for data transfer. Almost all of the ieee standards spoke of ‘unicorns’ in the form of multi-megabit and whoa… multi-gigabit link standards. No matter how extensive the search phrase or how the boolean search operands were applied nothing existed that described the service we experienced!
Finally, a RFC stood out that suited the internet experience every Zambian Internet user has experienced, RFC 1149. For the technically minded who would like to implement this experimental standard and save us from our woes, herewith:
This memo describes an experimental method for the encapsulation of
IP datagrams in avian carriers. This specification is primarily
useful in Metropolitan Area Networks. This is an experimental, not
recommended standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Avian carriers can provide high delay, low throughput, and low
altitude service. The connection topology is limited to a single
point-to-point path for each carrier, used with standard carriers,
but many carriers can be used without significant interference with
each other, outside of early spring. This is because of the 3D ether
space available to the carriers, in contrast to the 1D ether used by
IEEE802.3. The carriers have an intrinsic collision avoidance
system, which increases availability. Unlike some network
technologies, such as packet radio, communication is not limited to
line-of-sight distance. Connection oriented service is available in
some cities, usually based upon a central hub topology.
It even has a Wikipedia entry!!
We do foresee the immediate problem being the lack of the right type of avian carrier. Zambia for all her many blessings just does not have enough Pigeons or Doves roaming the streets of Lusaka. The ones that wonder along Lumumba have long lost the interest in flying, preferring to immerse themselves in shake-shake.
Any engineers out there willing to amend the RFC for Zambia? Maybe IP by Malasha?
Very to the point satire! Sadly.
As for the points being made at the ZICTA conference day two, especially from the MOs about how the internett acces has increased and coverage is better than ever etc. It doesn’t matter squat as long as the price continue to be in a range that excludes abundant access for most people.
Access, maybe, but what you you do with K10 worth of access?
You need abundant access, if you as a cash strapped student are going to go online to leear what you need to start and operate the next big tech revolutionary business.
That will not truly happen until Zambia has the infrastructure and regulations in place so that it is feasible to move away from charging by the MB and GB.
THAT will be the big change, and I’m not sure too many people realize what a game changer that will be but instead stare themselves blind on ‘coverage’ and ‘access’ percentages.
What I liked most was (from the wikipedia entry):
vegard@gyversalen:~$ /sbin/ifconfig tun0
tun0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:10.0.3.2 P-t-P:10.0.3.1 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:150 Metric:1
RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:88 (88.0 b) TX bytes:168 (168.0 b)
vegard@gyversalen:~$ ping -c 9 -i 900 10.0.3.1
PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms
Brilliant…except the latency that could cause issues