N4C Summer 2010 Trial

Between early July and the middle of August 2010 the participants in the networking for communications challenged communities (N4C) project will be providing email and limited web services in some locations in Padjelanta. Given that there are no normal Internet connections in the area, we will be using Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) in order to provide these services. That means that an email sent from Staloluokta will travel on the next suitable helicopter to Ritsem from where it will be forwarded to the Internet. Based on our experience from 2009, we expect on average such an email will take about 15 hours to get from Staloluokta to its destination. Similarly, a response email from the Internet is likely to take another 15 hours to get back to Staloluokta. The limited web services we will be providing include content regularly pushed from the Internet as well as the ability to request specific web pages. As with the email service, delays will be measured in hours or days, depending on the location, helicopter movements and the availability of power.

Note that this is an experimental deployment - the service is not guaranteed in any respect, and you use it at your own risk.

How Does it Work? We have developed a solar-powered WiFi hotspot that we call a "village DTN router" (pictured on the right). You can use this just like your home wireless access point if you have a WiFi enabled device. (SSID="n4cvillage", no security). These devices include mail and web servers (start at http://village.n4c.eu/ if you're not here already) where these instructions and more can be accessed. Since these devices are solar-powered, they will sometimes turn themselves off to conserve battery power. Current plans call for the devices to be turned off from 22:00 until 06:00 local time, and also whenever the battery level is too low. There is a small screen on the village DTN router (inside the window) that displays the current state, which for example, will indicate when the device will next reboot, if it is in a low-power state. When the device is turned off, it will not provide any services:-) Full details of the (limited) user interface to this hardware can be found here. Please DON'T TAMPER WITH THESE DEVICES - as you can imagine it can take a lot of effort to go visit one to fix it! We have installed equipment on two Fiskflyg helicopters that can transfer messages between these village DTN routers and gateway devices installed at Ritsem. That is how emails and web content move between the remote sites and the Internet. The technology used for these transfers is called Delay-Tolerant Networking and is being used for trials like this one and for a range of other applications.

Locations and Dates Current plans call for village DTN routers to be installed as listed below. Note that dates may vary somewhat and that even locations are subject to change, as the trial proceeds. Ritsem: from July 1st to September 30th Staloluokta: from July 3rd to August 23rd Sallohaure: from July 5th to August 7th Vastens: from July 6th to August 7th Skuolla (calf-marking): from July 5th to July 9th, or from July 12th to July 16th For most services, messages from the Internet are delivered to all locations. So if you send a mail from Ritsem and someone answers that mail, then you should be able to see the response when you access the mail service later on in, for example, Staloluokta (if enough time has passed of course.)

http://www.padjelanta.com/en/karta/index.asp

Email

In order to use the email service, you need:

• A WiFi-enabled device with a standard email client.
• A mail account in the 'village.n4c.eu' domain (create account)
• To have configured your mail client with an account that uses our message store ("IMAP" server) and outbound mail relay ("SMTP" server). The same settings will work in all of our locations, and (when you get home) from the Internet, for the duration of the trial. Note however, that we only provide outbound mail relaying (i.e. sending) from within the trial area - when you're on the Internet, you need to use some other mail relay.

  Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server - optional SSL:	imap.village.n4c.eu Use SSL: Yes Port: 143 (without SSL) or 993 (with SSL)
  Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server - optional TLS or SSL:	smtp.village.n4c.eu (use authentication) Use Authentication: Yes Port without SSL or TLS/STARTTLS: 25 Port for TLS/STARTTLS: 587 Port for SSL: 465
  Account Name:	your full email address (including @village.n4c.eu)
  Email Address:	your email address (username@village.n4c.eu)
  Password:	your chosen password

  How you configure this depends on your client, but there are many web pages that explain this, for example: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=12913 Note that if your password is something you use elsewhere, or if you are concerned that another user could eavesdrop your wireless connection then you really should turn on the TLS or SSL security options.
• Once your mail account is setup and working, you can choose to set up mail forwarding from any other mail account you have, for example from a gmail or Yahoo! account. Note that we cannot do that, so you need to figure that part out yourself.
• When sending mail, you can use any "From:" address you like, so the mail can appear to come from your normal email account. Of course, if you want replies to come to you in the trial area, but have not set up mail fowarding, then you need to set the "Reply-To" field or the "From:" field to your village.n4c.eu mail address.
• Patience! Mail won't be quick!

Full instructions for using the mail service may be found here. (TBD)

Web Services

To use the web service you need a WiFi-enabled device with a standard browser.

There are two ways to get at web pages - each day we push some content to each of the village DTN routers, and you can access that content as if you were browsing the web normally. You can also request content we don't push to be specially delivered. Note however, that only fairly "static" web content really works well either way - rich web applications cannot currently be used via our service since they generally depend on a "real" Internet connection.

Pushed Web Content

To access "pushed" web content, you simply browse to the usual places and our web infrastructure will serve up the web pages, if they are present. Since we clearly cannot copy the entire web, only a limited set of pages are available. Mostly, those are news, weather and other local sites that we expect to be of interest. For a list of the sites that are available, go to http://pushed.village.n4c.eu/. One site in particular may be of interest - each router has a full copy of the Skool.se web site content which contains lots of educational materials in Swedish.

If you would like us to add a site, please send us an email at help@village.n4c.eu and we'll try to add that to the list (no guarantees though!). Be as specific as you can about the content you'd like (many sites use complex active scripts that won't work well in a trial like ours).

Requesting Specific Pages

To request a specific web page, you can use our web request portal, which allows you to enter a web site address (a URL). We will then send that to an automated web engine which will attempt to get those pages and send them back to you. Of course, this will take quite some time, so is only really suitable if you will be in the area and able to use the network for a few days at least. This service works best if your browser accepts "cookies," in which case, it is possible to make a request where only you get to see the results. The default is that pages you request this way will be available to anyone who tries to access them. (Though they will not be "indexed" on our list of sites.)

Client Devices

Most WiFi enabled devices with mail and web clients should work. We have used the following devices successfully with the village DTN routers. Your mileage may vary!

• Asus EEE PC 901 netbook
• iPhone 3G
• Lenovo thinkpad

We are considering providing some laptops or other client devices for shared use in some of our locations for some of the time, so do ask if you'd like to use the system, but don't have a device with you, and we'll help if we can.

We are also investigating the provision of a web-mail front-end for the mail service, for devices that have a browser but no mail client. We'll provide more details on that once we've done some testing.

Contact

The main developers of this trial are from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and Intel Ireland, co-operating with other partners in the N4C project, in particular Luleå University of Technology (LTU), and Tannak AB. who are providing local assistance, users and support.

You can contact us in a number of ways, but do remember that some of them make take some time!

• In person: Some of us will be in the area during the trial. Look for jackets or posters with the N4C Logo.
• Via email: help@village.n4c.eu (this can be read at each router and from the Internet...when it gets there!)
• Via the web: http://village.n4c.eu/help (TBD)
• Via satellite phone (expensive!!): +ccc-aa-nnn-nnnn (TBD)

We'd really welcome your feedback, whether positive or negative, about any aspect of the trial. The best way to give us that feedback is to send us an email at: help@village.n4c.eu.

Privacy, Security etc.

Since this is an experimental deployment, we do record lots about what happens in the network. For mail users, that means that we could, in principle, read your emails, just like any other Internet service provider could. For web users, that means that we could track the pages you read, just like most Internet service providers actually do. However, we will do neither.

We will destroy any private or personally identifying information within a year of the end of the trial, and we will never make any such information public in any form. Any scientific papers or other publications resulting from the trial will only include statistics and we will ensure that any such statistics are anonymized to the fullest extent possible.

However, you use this experimental network at your own risk, and there is always the possibility that our network, or machines on our network could be hacked. While we do endeavour to secure our network, machines and data, this is not a production network, so users should not use this network for sensitive data, such as banking details, etc. Users should also not re-use passwords from other systems that may be more sensitive.

As a mail user, you will only ever receive emails from us relating to the operation of the network but such mails will never request your password. We do plan to send an email after the trial, giving a one week warning that the mail servers will be decommissioned to any users who request such a warning. The purpose of this mail is to give users a chance to retrieve any messages from our servers that they might wish to keep for later.

We do not have a formal acceptable use policy, however, our network has very limited capacity and could be susceptible to congestion should users attempt to email videos from the trial area or to download video, so we reserve the right to delete anything that causes a problem for the network, including for example larger emails or illegal content should we become aware of such. This is an experimental network and depends on users behaving well, so please do not abuse the system! (Thanks:-)