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kiwi kabul wifi |
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| As you can imagine, the internet
can be hard to come by in Kabul, Afghanistan. The suburb of Karte-Se,
where many international non-government organisations (INGO) are based,
is without electricity, town water, phone lines or even a sewer
system. That being said, throughout this dusty wee suburb, are the
tell-tale signs of life on the internet. Many satellite systems
are visible to the average passing sheep or goat. Sadly, most of
this expensive bandwidth is wasted, with very little sharing of
resources between organisations.
So, what do you do if your aid organisation, doesn't have the necessary funding for a satellite system of its own? You beg, borrow and barter. ora international, Afghanistan, has managed to do just that by obtaining the use of other organisation's sat. systems in exchange for a wee bit of IT know-how. We are in the fortunate situation of being sandwiched between two NGOs, each with their own sat. system. The first set-up involved connecting to NGO1's wireless network. Their Belkin Access Point (AP) is around 80 to 100 metres away and situated deep within their office walls. Amazingly, this signal could be picked up, initially, within the first floor of our office building with a Lynksys AP (yay!). Our AP is set to repeater mode and repeats the signal downstairs to a software router. However, as spring and summer arrived, the trees between our offices decided it was time to grow. So, our AP was banished to the verandah. The trees continued to flourish, so again, we were forced into drastic action, building a tidy little corner reflector (design by M Erskine) - turning off diversity. See picture. The second setup involved connecting to NGO2's wireless network (actually giving them an AP so that we could connect to them wirelessly). The AP is around 120 metres away and situated just inside a window. The signal was a wee bit weak (trees & walls again) and the corner reflector was not going to cut the mustard. We don't have a donor relations department at the moment, so weren't willing to go with the expensive RF solution. However, some innovative guys at Massey University have been playing with a neat kiwi solution, utilising the radio culinary delights of Chinese cookware - the Poor Man's Wifi. So I bought a couple of cooking vat scoops at 60 Afghani (~NZ$2), had a Zonet Wireless LAN USB Adapter sent out from the land beyond and followed the great instructions of the 'poor men' at Massey. The focal lengths of the scoops were found optically by wrapping them in tinfoil and aiming them at the sun, a very tight band of light at 5 cm (But doing the calculations, D = 200mm, c = 50mm, focal length = (D^2)/16c = 50mm and the f / D ratio = 0.25). Lo and behold, it's better than a bought one. See picture. UPDATE: After fixing walls, windows, pipes, plumbing etc. the land lord of your glorious mansion in Karte-Se, may well feel his over-priced accommodation is in need of a price hike. Our land lord required 3 times the rent - so we moved (as it was snowing, I might like to add) over the Christmas period. We are now on the wrong side of the tracks, as it were, in a place called Ayub Khan Mena. Happily, a local cell phone network is setting up a wifi ISP. Their tower is approximately 350metres away, but in these early stages the signal is very weak (you can barely connect at the tower's base. Using the same scoop as before, we have no problems connecting. This is connected to a software router downstairs via a XTENDEX™ USB-C5-LC extender (around 40 metres away). We have tried out SKYPE (net telephony) and it works better than the cell network. See picture Just a quick thanks to those responsible for the above information, its as good as gold and is indirectly helping our work in Afghanistan (Self Help Groups, HIV AIDS Education, Basic Health Clinics and Health Education). 2 May 2005 |
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 Stir Fry Wifi |
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 Roshan Cell Tower |
