[Tfug] Remote networking communications and Internet gateways

[Zack Williams]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 6:26 PM, Casey Townsend
<Casey.Townsend at tucsonaz.gov> wrote:
> I would like to build (and then put together a how-to manual, with specific hardware recommendations and setup/config cookbooks) a system that can be deployed remotely to allow citizen journalists to be able to communicate with each other and upload video in real time from remote, no cell phone, no WiFi areas. My goal is to have this be almost as simple for the users as using their cell phones, while requiring minimal training for the technical people to set this up for them. Does this already exist?

There are commercial products that work over satellite that do this,
but they're quite expensive to purchase and operate.

Most amateur radio bands aren't designed for video or other high
bandwidth operation, and aren't trivial or license free to run.

There are also point to point microwave solutions designed for
broadcast video, but those too aren't license free or inexpensive.

> I know 'google is my friend,' but I hope with your help to not have to wade through hundreds of lame search results. I do not have personal experience with satellite internet, wireless mesh networks, or even portable cell phone towers, so I am asking for you to share your experience and expertise with me to help ease my learning curve.

Do you have parameters for this system? Like "portable devices should
cost less than X", "video quality should be Y", or "This kind of fixed
infrastructure needs to be deployed"?

> My initial survey shows that Ham radio may play an important part in this as well. Any recommendations on who to contact here in Tucson, or nationally, to help me with that too?

Locally, TAPR might be worth checking out: http://www.tapr.org

I have a fair amount of experience working with video encoding and
live streaming, and all the systems I've seen similar to this have
used either point to point wifi with a wired connection, or the cell
network.

Going without already built backhaul infrastructure is going to be the
most difficult limitation to deal with.

Scaling back the requirements to audio only, text, or non-realtime
video or low framerate image streams would lighten the backhaul load.

- Zack