By Xeni Jardin
August 10 – Inside the Gyuto Ramoche temple in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala, the scene is timeless, seemingly centuries old: Rows of scarlet-robed young monks from Tibet, hunched over prayer scrolls in mediation.
Outside, on a rooftop not far away, I spot an antenna. It’s one of 30 connection points in a wireless network that’s bringing the Internet to this remote region where communication technology has been expensive, unreliable and hard to come by — until now.
The monks in meditation over those scrolls are a key inspiration for creating the wireless network. They are refugees from Tibet and part of a community of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Web access promises better communication, a path to preserve Tibetan culture and a way to tell their stories to the outside world.
Much of the so-called mesh network taking root in Dharamsala is the work of Yahel Ben-David. The Israeli engineer earned his technology chops in Silicon Valley and his survival skills in the Israeli military. The community wireless network, he says, is funded so far by his own credit cards. Some maintenance challenges he faces are unique — like the best way to monkey-proof an antenna.
Each antenna links with others to form what’s called a wireless mesh that provides Internet access. Connection points spread out over an area “mesh” together, so if one or two antennas are down, network users can connect with another in the mesh.
But don’t expect to be able to whip out your laptop and log on if you visit Dharamsala — for now, the network is mostly for Tibetan organizations and schools, who agree to host equipment and pay a nominal fee to access the Internet and make Web-based phone calls.
Ben-David and his colleagues — who earn the Hindi language honorific “walla” for being computer tradesmen — are getting remote assistance from a global hacker activist group called Cult of the Dead Cow. The crew also recycles networking hardware parts from the West, and uses free, open-source software run the network and keep costs down.
Because Buddhist temples in the area are often built on the highest possible hilltops, Ben-David and his team use them to mount antennas. Sometimes they paint religious symbols on the devices so they’ll blend in. Most of the antennas are solar powered — you can’t depend on electricity working all the time in this part of the world, but you can depend on the sun.
All the hard work is beginning to pay off. There are about 2,000 computers are connected to the Dharamsala network, and the Tibetan Technology Center has attracted the attention of tech activists throughout India and the world. In October, the group will host a community wireless summit to bring all of those organizations together.
HACKING THE HIMALAYAS – A four-part series explores the how Western “hackers” are building low-cost communications networks to bring phone and Web service to displaced Tibetan refugees — and how native peoples are trying to hold onto their culture in an interconnected world.
Audios will be available here.
Visit http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5624896 for more info.
Here’s the reporter’s notebook blog: http://xeni.net/trek/
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