Connecting the last billion

The last billion people to join the online world, are likely to face at least one of two obstacles:Part I: Rural Internet AccessRural, sparsely populated, areas make conventional infrastructure investments unfeasible: Bigcorporations attempt to address this challenge via the launch of Low-Earth-Orbiting (LEO) satelliteconstellations, fleets of high-altitude balloons, and giant solar-powered drones; although thesegrandiose initiatives hold potential, they are costly and risky. At the same time, small local operators,Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs), are growing in numbers, in subscribe base andin territory covered. WISPs can play a major role in serving a growing number of rural communities,as well as offer real competition to incumbent operators in urban and semi-urban markets,leading to better service at reduced costs.The key motivation for this work is to lower the barriers-to-entry for small rural WISPs, and tosustainably grow their operation — this has been my research focus for over 15 years.The core of this work is based on a case-study of a WISP, FurtherReach — which we havebuilt from the ground up. This WISP brings broadband Internet service to hundreds of subscribersat the south coast of Mendocino county in California. Through designing, deploying and operatingthis venture, we learn about the real challenges faced by WISPs, develop technical solutions aswell as business models, operational methodologies and deployment strategies. The FurtherReachcase study is presented in chapter 2. Chapter 1 introduces the overall WISP ecosystem. In chapter3 we discuss the potential of Software Defined Networks (SDN) to aid in WISP operations. Finally,chapter 4 discusses the often overlooked computer-security concerns that are unique to ruralcommunities, especially in developing countries.Part II: Dissent NetworkingOppressive regimes censor and restrict information flow. Sadly, Internet censorship, in somecountries, does not seem to be going away, and presents a growing challenge. The degree and effectivenessof censorship varies greatly, as does the risk of getting caught circumventing it. Similarly,the technologies to aid dissenters vary accordingly. My work in this field predates smart-phones,which I believe could be made to offer safe and effective solutions even in the most dangerousof countries. Should we consider these technologies Internet access? Once again the degree ofconnectivity, and especially interactivity, from behind a censoring firewall, varies greatly.In chapter 5, I present our attempt at defining the threats and narrating the exceptionally challengingproblem space. I find this chapter quite discouraging as it dictates exceptional restrictionson the design space, yet ignoring these constraints may put users of the technology in greater risksthan without it. It makes us question if technology can help at all?I continue in chapter 6, to present Rangzen, our initial attempt at designing a solution thatadheres to the strict constraints presented in 5. While limited in functionality, especially givenits delay-tolerant approach, which is incompatible with many Internet applications that expectreal-time interactivity, it does successfully follow our design guidelines for dissent technologiesas presented in chapter 5. We have built an Android app, Rangzen, based on these design specifications,which undergoes a beta testing program at the time of this writing. The app will bedistributed freely on the Android store in January 2016, and the code is open source and availableto the public