Jungle-loving techies needed for pedal-powered Internet

They have been in the village of Phon Kam, two hours drive north from the capital of this Central Asian country, working to bring communications to a total of five villages using a ruggedised, low power computer, the open source Linux operating system and a Wireless LAN network. Lee Felsenstein thought up the project after being reunited with an old acquaintance, US war veteran Lee Thorn. Thorn is one of the founders of the Jhai Foundation, which is focused on making reparations for the bombing inflicted on Laos during the Vietnam war.

The deadline was Thursday 13th February. Four days before the deadline Felsenstein emailed readers of the Bay Area Wireless Users Group (BAWUG) mailing list asking for help with formatting the hardware being used. And then two days before the day, a power surge damaged hard drives they were using to program their computer, corrupting it.

BAWUG is a group of local wireless enthusiasts that have prompted the WiFi explosion in the area. Its founders, Tim Pozar and Matt Peterson, are currently working to criss-cross the Bay with long range wireless connections hooked up from hill to hill.

And yesterday, at one of the monthly BAWUG meetings in a San Francisco hotel Feldestein and lead software engineer Stephen Okay aired some of the problems they have run into.

"From a software point of view it's been nothing but showstoppers every day", said Okay, "Which got us thinking that this is not a smart-people project but a lot-of-really-smart people project."

Okay said they needed specialists in telecoms and in Internet telephony, experts in Linux kernals (or in this case " Lao-nix" as it has been customised to be accessed via the local Lao script), and people who know how to make this into a replicable system that can be used elsewhere. "It's a good project if you like extreme engineering, if you like to think outside the box", said Okay. It is hoped the 6 watts computer will withstand the heat and rain to provide email and web access as well as allow phone calls over the internet.

He could have but didn't note that the engineers would also have to lug themselves, their luggage and kit through jungle and along dirt road, keeping an eye out for guerillas all the while, to get to the site.

The travelers said that half their effort was being spent on stopping people from stealing the set-up. "Solar panels are routinely stolen", said Lee Felsenstein. He has been working on an alarm system that still sounds minutes after being tripped, "and that's even after all the wires have been cut to it". Felsenstein is known for being an early member of the Homebrew Computer Club, which sought to make computers more widely available, and he invented the world's first portable computer in the 1980s.

It was the actually the locals who asked the Jhai Foundation for help accessing the Internet so that they could ensure they weren't getting ripped off for the rice, chickens and silk they took to the nearest market. They also want to sell local textiles and craft work in Europe or the US, and last but not least speak to relatives near and far.

Despite their desire for the system, those villagers involved in the project reportedly took news of the delay in their stride. Felsenstein and his crew hope that they will get their project together by April, before the May monsoon begins.

More can be found about the Jhai Foundation and the Jhai computer at www.jhai.org while BAWUG is at here. µ