Turning 802.11 inside-out

The past decade has seen communication revolution in the form of cellular telephony as well as the Internet, but much of it has been restricted to the developed world and metro pockets in the developing world. While the use of cellular technologies can cut down on the time to deploy access networks, the cost economics make this non-viable in growing telecom economies. In the Digital Gangetic Plains (DGP) project, we are exploring the use of 802.11 as a long-distance access technology. 802.11 is currently cost-priced due to competitive mass production and hence is attractive for low cost and rapid deployment in rural areas. We have built an extensive testbed in a rural setting consisting of multi-hop directional 802.11 links, the testbed spanning up to 80km at its longest. To our knowledge such a long-distance, multi-hop testbed based on 802,11 is unique thus far While 802.11 is attractive in terms of cost economics, it was inherently designed for indoor use. Our novel use of the technology for outdoor long-distance access links presents several challenges. Our experience with the testbed has brought several research as well as operational issues to the fore. In this paper, we describe the novel technical challenges that lie ahead in using 802.11 to bridge the digital divide.