Community Networks and University Of Guadalajara - DC3

2 Jan 2017

Hello everyone, I hope you have had a great hollidays and a happy new year.

As you may know after IGF me and Nico Pace stayed in Mexico to evaluate
possible alliances with the Universidad de Guadalajara (UdG) among its
different faculties, here is a short summary:

It is important to emphasize that nothing could have been possible without
the guidance and constant support of Mr. Jaime Olmos, who is in charge of
the Network Operations Center (NOC) at the UdG, he has managed to interview
each and every one of the people we needed to know. Thanks Jaime !!!

Virtual University of UdG and community networks:
The UdG has a Virtual University (UdGV), with a subproject CASA: Learning
Communities and Academic Services. This project is based on a physical
Internet access center where people can be trained academically in the UdGV
through the internet.

After the dialogue with the authorities of the UdGV we agreed with the
vision that these institutions serve as an anchor to promote community
networks, sharing the connectivity they provide there with those that are
formed.

In order to move forward with this vision we set up a pilot program, a
proposal where the physical infrastructure that the university has served
as a link between the university backbone and the community network that it
is intended to promote (using the Altermundi model), the university has
Provided a strategic location where they consider that the project is
viable and necessary, the community chosen is the "Casa Comunitaria" of San
Antonio de Juanacaxtle, Jalisco (20 ° 32'46.5 "N 103 ° 09'18.8" W
20.546245, -103.155215)

This proposal is in the stage of being discussed by the board of directors
of this institution so we expect to receive a response next week at the end
of the holiday period, however, the previous response of its managers has
been quite positive.

"Preparatorias" of UdG and community networks:

The UdG also has a "Preparatorias" project similar to an us highschool,
this project is consolidated and manages more than 300 buildings throughout
the region of Jalisco, the idea with this program is that their physical
infrastructure that currently has connectivity through the backbone
provided by the university could manage a gateway to the community network
of an isolated region. This project has also had a favorable response on
the part of its director, this approach is waiting for an official meeting
to present the structure evaluation of the pilot project.

Curricular program in the UdG and UdGV with content on community networks:

In some meetings with professors of the Engineering schools (CUCEI) and
technology programs of other units (CUCEA) and in charge of the Information
Technology Management Center (CGTI) we have agreed to collaborate so that
their subjects and their programs include material on community networks
and even the creation of proposals of thesis to involve the student
population to be sensitized by the problems that we face.

The UdGV has also agreed to create a special curriculum on community
networks so that it serves as basic and advanced education for the
communities that, through their CASA project, have created a community
network, that is, to continue to strengthen knowledge and growth.

Other approaches with the university community:

Intermittent scenarios of connectivity and education:

Those in charge of the virtual classrooms at the UdGV have participated in
their concern regarding the problem of intermittent connectivity, so we
have made available to their workgroup in order to find solutions that
provide fault tolerance in their environments That the education of its
students is not affected by these inconveniences, for this we have talked
about local servers, synchronized stations of content, etc ...

Low-cost self-contained laboratory:

Another problem that we have been involved in is that the equipment to
create laboratories in these communities is the high price of the equipment
(medium-high ganna workstations), so we have considered the creation of
laboratories of low cost and with autonomous capacity like for example:
http://www.solarpoweredlearning.com/
This has been taken in a good way by those responsible for this program and
we await their return from holidays.⁠⁠⁠⁠

We'll let you know how this is evolving.

Any comments are welcome, greetings to all and happy new year,

Maureen and Nicolas

-- 

Maureen Patricia Hernández González
Systems Engineer. Universidad de Los Andes.

<https://ve.linkedin.com/in/maureenhernandez>
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