New Orleans & CUWiN.

Hi all,

For the past few days I've been increasingly swamped with scores of requests, questions, and ideas about CUWiN, New Orleans, and rapid deployment of telecommunications infrastructures in crisis situations. Here's very brief answers to some of the basic questions folks have been asking:

Q: Would CUWiN's system work as a disaster recovery telecommunications infrastructure?

Read more...

A: Yes. With necessary tweaking and the addition of solar/battery power, single-board routers running CUWiN's system could be utilized to build this network.

Q: Would this only be useful to connect people to the Internet? What would happen when the Internet connection went down, or was sporadic?
A: While the network would provide Internet access whenever it was available, it would also connect resources within the network. Thus, data communications between devices on the system (e.g., VoIP cell phones, laptops, wireless Palm Pilots, etc.) would be possible even without Internet connectivity. CUWiN's software automatically detects internet connectivity -- so whenever a connection was detected anywhere on the network, it would share that bandwidth throughout the network.

Q: How would you keep the system running without electricity?
A: Unlike the massive telecommunications structures (which are down at the moment), CUWiN nodes run on roughly 10-14 watts of power (i.e., about a 5th of a lightbulb) and thus can be run for extensive periods of time off of either batteries or battery/solar panel setups.

Q: Why isn't this system already developed & deployed?
A: CUWiN wants to develop a non-proprietary emergency response kit -- originally we put in a grant application in 2003 to build this exact system. Unfortunately, our proposal was not funded, but yes, we would still like to develop this kit.

Q: How long does setup of a system like this take once you're on site?
A: This system was originally envisioned as a first-responder bioterrorism response infrastructure. It's architecture is fully ad-hoc and is built for deployment within minutes. One could cover a multi-square block radius extremely quickly

Q: Is the hardware proprietary?
A: No, nodes can be built out of any x86 architecture computer and we're actively working to port the software to other devices. You can pretty much build them with whatever's laying around -- but check the CUWiN website for the latest documentation on supported devices.

Have other questions you'd like answered? Just post them as comments below and I'll answer whenever I get a moment.

--Sascha