Community Wireless Networks

Shaffer, Gwen

doi:10.1002/9781119537151.ch19

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

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“…ITU and Internet Society reported that after the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people connected to the Internet has increased to 63 per cent from 54 per cent, indicating that the majority of the connections are mostly from developed countries and that most marginalised communities in the Global South remain unconnected [5,7,8,27,36]. Some CWNs, such as Tanzania CWN, Zimbabwe, Inethi SA, and Zenzeleni, supported their community members during the pandemic [40].…”

Section: Community Wireless Network and Network Management In The Dev...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconsidering Network Management Interfaces for Communities

Iitumba,

Shinde,

Ortega

et al. 2023

Proceedings of the 4th African Human Computer Interaction Conference

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Community-owned mesh wireless networks enable cost-effective sharing of networked resources, expanding internet and local service accessibility through low-cost WiFi hardware. However, maintaining these networks comes with expenses. In addition to hardware costs, community members need extensive training to install, monitor, and troubleshoot the networks using Network Management Interfaces (NMIs). Effective network management is crucial for CWN resilience within communities. This paper presents qualitative interviews with 25 stakeholders from two CWNs in India and four in South Africa, examining challenges to CWN resilience. Workshops were conducted with network operators and users in India (Janastu) and prospective operators in South Africa (FOCUS Network) to reimagine NMIs, discussing challenges and prototyping interfaces. Our findings highlights diverse network management approaches, revealing difficulties in technical capacity building, troubleshooting, and prototyping. Designing NMIs with local network operators' insights and skills is crucial for CWN sustainability. The paper outlines design opportunities to improve network management interfaces for CWNs, fostering network resilience for critical infrastructures. CCS Concepts: • Computer systems organization → Embedded systems; • Human Computer Interactions → HCI ; • Co-design → Computer Systems; • Networks → Network reliability.

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