AirJaldi

The AirJaldi mesh network is located in and around Dharamshala. The network can be considered as one of the largest mesh networks in the world. It covers over a hundred kilometers of rough terrain with a number of mountains and hills. Most of the network is situated in the foothills of the western Himalayan ranges. The network has already provided Internet access to over 2000 computers. The backbone is comprised of 30 nodes. More information on mesh networks and infrastructures in Dharamshala will be furnished in a follow-up article.

According to me the network can be considered as the ICT infrastructure of the Tibetan government. This is because mainly the Tibetan Children Village, Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute, Norbulingka etc use the network. The network is maintained by the Tibetan Technology Center also know as TibTech. It was developed in cooperation with other institutes such as the Dharamsala Information Technology Group and the Tibetan Computer Resource Center.

The network is built using cheap and off the shelf hardware. The firmwares on the routers are modified to improve efficiency, using OpenWRT as the base. The networks run software known as OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing) to create a P2P mesh between computers. The systems will move to a much more stable and robust platform called B.A.T.M.A.N. (Better Approach to Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking) that is championed by the Freifunk ("Free radio" in English).

Prominent personalities...

There were keynotes by:
Roger Downer who is a professor in the University of Limerick
Eric Brewer from the University of Berkley
Vic Hayes who is regarded as the father of WiFi

There were also a number of presentations from other noted speakers such as

Richard Stallman founder of the Free Software Foundation
Dave Hughes who created the worlds highest CyberCafe in the Himalayas
Malcom Matson who works for the OPLAN Foundation
Mahabir Pun who can be considered as the father of the Nepal Wifi Networks
Elektra an intellect in wifi and radio technologies
Jim Forster, one of Cisco's pioneering engineers

The conference had a good presence of Americans, Europeans, Asians but lacked representation from the African subcontinent. The next WSFII Annual meeting will be held in Ghana, in hope to increase the African presence.

Related Links:
AirJaldi: http://www.airjaldi.com
Freifunk: http://www.freifunk.net
OLSR: http://www.olsr.org