moblog

moblog
Originally uploaded by kippster.

I wanted to test this moblog thing...



This is a picture of the farm which my ancestors homesteaded back in

the day in southwest Nebraska. Picture was taken Thanksgiving 2005,

the farm house is off to the right, but the land is no longer owned

by my family (only the few acres around the house).

Game Theory

I caught a presentation from a professor (Dr. Marco Castillo) who does research in Public Policy at Georgia Tech. He recently applied game theory to model war crimes/abuses in Peru to look at the behaviors and motivations and see if he can determine the types of discrimination that took place.

Very interesting talk, both the subject and the idea of using game theory to explore the motivations and behaviors.

It got me to thinking (which is rather scary) that I could apply game theory to the development of IXPs in developing nations. If I can model the participants, their motivations and the externalities, perhaps there is a way to better model the path to moving IXP creation forward faster...

The network effect of the Internet has impact both on the usefulness and value to end users, but also on the cost/benefit for providers -- perhaps this is the area that ISP providers are not groking -- the trust issue seems to be an overriding inhibitor to interconnections even though the evidence seems clear that it is in everybody's best interest to move forward.

I need to learn more about game theory and how to apply it to such a 'coordination' game...

Bolivia

I'm still knee deep in Africa, working through the issues regarding the regional IXP and Internet access in the region.

In fact, I spent some time on Friday talking to both Risa's and Laney's classes about the trip. Okay, I didn't gain much additional insight into IXP's, but it was fun and I was happy to be able to share some information about another part of the world to a bunch of kindergarteners and third graders. The third graders really liked the goat head story!

I have expanded my world interest and am now in a course on Latin American Democracy/Politics. Yeah, I know, Africa isn't enough, I needed another continent to worry about!

Latin America has some very interesting things going on these days. A bunch of new leaders are moving into position, and most of them are leftist leaning socialist tending folk.

Most interesting, especially today, is Bolivia. Evo Morales was inaugurated as the President of Bolivia after a rehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifsounding democratic election in which he earned some 54% of the popular vote.

A bit of information about Evo can be found all over the net...but I like wikipedia. Some great information about who attended this event on MABB's blog. A great blog with commentary/translation/dictation of the ceremony today. An additional link to a great photostream from the trip Evo made yesterday.

Amazing cast of characters, and although Castro didn't attend the event, he did send his Vice-President, Carlos Lage...

24

Okay, just a quick trip into the world of a geek...

For those of you who watch 24 (you know, the show with Jack Bauer)...well we watched the 10:00-11:00 episode for the new Day 5 season. Of course it was on Tivo, so when Jack sent an image of the terrorist to Chloe so that she could analyze the detonator on the dude's vest and reprogram Jack's phone to the detonation frequency...

Well, upon closer inspection, the email address he sent it to was co'brian@CTUGOV.net and the image was 106KB...

Not satisfied with that, I did a whois on the domain (there is no website for the domain), and found that it is registered to:

---

Twentieth Century Fox
21050 lassen St.
chatsworth, CA 91311
US

Domain Name: CTUGOV.NET

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Twentieth Century Fox rrgprops@yahoo.com
21050 lassen St.
chatsworth, CA 91311
US
818 717 5444

Record expires on 14-Oct-2008.
Record created on 14-Oct-2005.

---

I decided to play along, sent an email to Chloe and cc'd rrgprops@yahoo.com. I actually got a response:

---

thanks for the response, a lot more to come
Randy G.

--- Kipp Jones wrote:

> Chloe,
>
> Good work on identifying the detonator on that vest...amazing image processing on a 106KB image that Jack sent, that is some enhancement you've got going on!
>
> Kipp

---

Anyway, fun to play with the media interactions...thus ends your quick journey into my life!

Mud on the Tires

Mud on the Tires
Originally uploaded by kippster.

Personally, I think it's time to trade in the TrailBlazer -- clearly we need a 4-wheel drive!

Yesterday, Pam wanted to see why one would want 4-wheel drive and tested the TrailBlazer (rather ironic name, since there was clearly no blazing going on here!) in some Georgia Clay.

Sometimes, you should just listen to music and not try to act it out :-)

Kipp

Wireless IXP

There appears to be a dearth of information related to formulating an IXP using wireless technologies. This is not surprising given the fact that wireless technology has only recently become robust and cost effective enough to be used for local loop and backhaul activity.

There are several interesting areas around this subject in which to sink your teeth into. Wireless technology options (canopy, wimax, other), spectrum management, mast creation, salt water issues, signal propagation, privacy and security assurances, finacial models, etc.

I'll be building off of some great work that has gone on in the last 10 years regarding IXPs and extending it to include a wireless angle.

Broadcast coverage

So, the local 11Alive (WXIA-TV Atlanta, NBC) did a small piece on our Georgia Tech course and the 5 teams that traveled around the world. Donna Lowry was the reporter, we spent over 90 minutes recording the material that squashed down to the 1.5 minute piece, but I'm happy that the program got the air time.

The story is online along with the video .

Beyond the news coverage, it was great to hear the different stories from the other members of the team. Some really great stories about experiences in the various lands, the people, the technology, the issues, and the possibilities. A lot of people talked about going on to do more work in this area -- one of the key outcomes of the class if you ask me.

Abuja Photos

CIMG0528.JPG
Originally uploaded by kippster.

All of my Abuja photos should be available on Flickr.com.

Back at the office

Now, back at the office, was able to start to organize my thoughts, notes and research from the trip.

Was able to reach a satellite teleport operator in Florida that does a fair amount of business in the West Africa region. He was very helpful in filling in some details on what the various satellite options were and what the relative costs of each were. Also, a US based teleport has a distinct disadvantage of European teleports in that these guys end up doing a double-hop satellite bounce to make it happen. This sounded like a tough business for US businesses, as it effectively doubles the cost of transmission...

I'm currently working on getting some information from PanAmSat as well, hopefully they'll be able to continue to fill in the gaps that I have as far as current capabilities and cost models for Internet access in the region.

Clearly, this multi-hop satellite based Internet solution is sub-optimal on several dimensions: cost, bandwidth, latency, capacity, reliability, locality.

As to cost, for example, a 256kbps dedicated both ways, C-band setup costs about $4k/month. I can get a full dedicated T1 (1.54Mbps) at just $400/month and that's not even the best deal. Latency -- I wish I had measured my latency from Abuja, but I can't imagine it being real good!

And then try to cover the $4k/month costs using the current market price of N100/hour at cyber cafes. At 100% capacity, each PC can generate some $500/month -- just to cover a decent dedicated network, one would need 8 full time fully utilized PCs. Since that just won't happen, what appears to be happening is the providers are opting for shared bandwidth (perhaps a 35:1 sharing ratio) to get the costs of bandwidth down, with a complete loss in quality of service and anything approaching broadband speeds.

Not the best situation, and since the connectivity continues to be fragmented with each provider solving the same problem over and over again, their is no market strength for the African providers...

Back in the States

So, it's been over a week since last I posted and I've done a bit more traveling since then...

I was planning on a leisurely evening before I left Abuja, but my friends arrived at the hotel (Nsikan, Arvind, Joshua, Nsikan's sister Alma, her friend, and a friend of Joshua's), so I had to go have a final farwell beer (or 2). It was a good send off!


Wednesday morning, I get up around 5, check out, and head to the airport at 6. Had 3,000 Naira left to my name so that was what I ended up paying for the cab ride. At the airport good and early, which was good as I had to argue with the British Air folk in order to get them to check my luggage at least as far as Washington. Got that taken care of and hang out awaiting the flight. My last images of Nigeria...

On the long flight to London, I did get to at least see the Sahara out the window as we flew over a lot of sand. Very impressive, would love to experience just a bit of the desert in person...

...but it is a very large desert!

And then it was fun seeing the European land mass appear...

And I was able to test my zoom from 37,000 feet moving at some 500 Mph to get a glimpse of some European city...wonder what city this is?

After switching planes at Heathrow, I took United back to Dulles...another hefty flight and fairly well packed in. Got some reading done and I think I caught a bit of a nap. Once in D.C., was very surprised to get through customs with all my luggage (given my luck going to Nigeria!). But I did, and it was about 7:30PM EST, and my flight isn't until 6:30AM on Thursday morning...

Tried to catch a late night flight to ATL, but they were all booked...couldn't get my boarding pass, so found a really comfortable (as if) chair in baggage claim that was close to an outlet so I could watch a movie (Tombstone) and catch a couple minutes of shut eye before my morning flight...

You can see my morning alarm clock at Dulles...



Back in ATL, had another chance to experience MARTA before finally seeing my family at the pick-up spot. A very happy reunion!

It's good to be back home, if only for a few hours before we head off to celebrate Christmas in Jackson, Mississippi...another 7 hours on the road, but a good relaxing time is awaiting me at the end of the trail!

Last Day!

Well, unfortunately, my last day was spent mostly in a funk -- I apparently got something, ate something, or dranks something that didnt suit me. I was fighting a fever all day while trying to complete my outline for a Regional IXP position paper for Mrs. Emakpore.

I did get it done, but I struggled through it which was a drag.

My final meeting with Mrs. Emakpore occured this morning, where we discussed the framework and several issues that she wanted to make sure were included in the outline (things like national versus regional, where would it be located, coordinating across agencies/countries...). Big project, but lots of potential to spur a massive leap forward for the region in terms of connectivity and cost of said connectivity.

I also have been using SkpeOut the last couple days -- since my cell phone still doesn't have a charger (I decided to do an experiment and see if I could live without it). Apparently I can, but I have to find other outlets! SkypeOut lets you call from your computer to any old POTS phone out there. Actually called Arvind across the table -- would have been interesting to trace those packets, and then the return connection, to Nigeria and ultimately to the cell provider. Makes for an interesting delay, but hey, it's cool!

Finish packing tonight, head to the airport early in the morning to catch a 9:00 flight out. Sad and happy all at the same time. Eager to be home, definitely. Looking forward to a lot of things back home. NOT looking forward to the flights home though. At least I'm flying British Air and not some Nigerian airline...shikes, another near miss yesterday with an emergency landing of a Bellview (Nigerian) aircraft in Ghana flying from Lagos.

Well, likely my last post from Nigeria, so thanks for everybody who has read this, and feel free to repsond or leave comments!

Kipp

Back to the grind...

Okay, so it's like Monday and all, so we schlepped into the office and spent the morning slaving away. Really sucks to be us!

Actually, we did do work, all three of us were rather tied to this one spot -- we could have moved away every once in awhile, but this appears to be the only spot with outlets. So, while wireless in one sense, we were very much tied to a wire. And, if it's there, you might as well jack in, right?

I spent the day preparing for a meeting with my local boss, Mrs. Emakpore, I have a 10:00 meeting with her tomorrow to discuss the status and what the end result she can look forward to should look like. We'll see how that one goes...

Also, was able to take a bit of time to complete my shopping activities -- you know, giving back to the community and all! This time, did most of it on my own, so I think I gave, and gave, and gave...but that's okay, right (Pam, you got my back, right?).

Spent the evening doing some more work and had to take a break to get some shots of our office at night....

Arvind, hanging at the office, 'working' late

Arvind and Santa get real close!

Does the boathouse look inviting or what?

Across the pool view...

Sunday

Sunday was mostly a day of rest and shopping. That's right, I travel all the way around the world just to shop -- I'm sure my man points have just gone down again...

Spent the morning reading and doing a bit of work. Then hung at the pool for an hour before heading to the Wuse Market again. This time to actually buy things. We were able to get Joseph (our host's driver as seen in the picture) to take us to the market and make sure we didn't get completely taken by the locals in the negotiation process. Really appreciate him helping us out -- we bought him a couple of things in appreciation.

It's a very lengthy process actually performing a transaction here, the art of price negotiation is certainly not one of my strengths. I think Joseph was appalled whenever I got involved! Both Arvind and I were able to find some items of interest and think we ended up doing quite well in the end.

Later in the afternoon, spent at the Boathouse for an early dinner, some work, then back to the room for an early night.

Abuja National Mosque

The Abuja National Mosque is not very far from the Sheraton, and provides a nice element to take some photos, especially during a sunrise on a Sunday morning. This first one was created using the 'illustration' setting on my camera and I thought it had a pleasing look about it.

Note that many of my photos of Abuja include a hazy element to them. This is actually dust brought in by winds coming south from the Sahara -- it's called the Harmattan. This article talks about the Harmattan along with a number of other things that happen during this season.

Mosque highlighted by the sun hitting the the infamous "harmattan dust haze"

Close up of the mosque during sunrise in the dust

The market and steak

After Arvind (finally) completed some work he needed to get out, we decided to take a trip to the Wuse Market.

Traffic to the market was crazy busy. I thought we were going to die of asphixiation before we made it in!

This market is quite large and stuffed with vendors hawking their wares. As we arrived rather late in the day (Arvind's fault), we had little time to actually shop, so we took the time to simply browse and explore the market.

Our driver, Ishaku, graciously volunteered to walk us around the market and show us the various areas. Meanwhile, a kid Muhamed attempted to intervene and was roundly told off by our driver. For some reason, I think Arvind and I stood out a bit and made for an easy mark!

Into the market...

There was an amazing array of goods and wares. Lots of cloth, clothing, and tailors throughout the market. Shoes, bags, belts, watches, jewlery, electronics, cleaning products, rugs, much of everything -- row after row, shop after shop.

The environment was somewhat reminiscent of my memories of our county fair. Lots of people yelling at you to come in to the shops, people stopping by to hawk their goods, carneys calling out, people moving about. A very full sensory situation.

We looked at several outfits (I can never remember all of the Nigerian terms for the clothes) as well as some raw material. At this point, we were rushed so I declined to purchase until I had more time and not be rushed by any external factors.

Ishaku then showed us to the food section of the market. Fruits and vegatables of all sorts and colors and sizes. The meat section was especially interesting -- from stacks of fish to odd looking things that I'd rather not know. Butchers were cutting up sections of meat in one area, lots of knives hacking away and flies buzzing. Probably could have gotten that goat head here!

When we took our cameras out to get a photo with Ishaku, the crowd started milling about. Ishaku was especially interested in seeing his picture! Some of the crowd would step out of the way of the photo, but would immediately surround us again. Very interesting.

Arvind was able to get him a pair of what I would call flip-flops and what others seem to call slippers for N300 (down from the proferred N600). We examined some more material and then the shops were all closing down...

That evening we spent a few hours working by the pool before hunger overcame us. Off to the Ibuku Steakhouse for a nice dinner. I hadn't eaten yet, so food was tasting very good. New England clam chowder, a steak, and some mushrooms -- after that, I was pretty much ready for a night's sleep!

Immersion

Nsikan, Arvind and I spent a couple of hours with Dr. Raymond Akwule, formerly a professor at George Mason, and current CEO of the Netpost, a public-private entity attempting to span Nigeria with Internet access and services by leveraging the existing postal service infrastructure. Dr. Akuwle, a very professional, ambitious and visionary man has had his hand in world affairs for many years and in ICT in developing countries during that time as well.

He spoke of early 80's when he recognized the need for national telecommunications infrastructure in Nigeria, his work in various countries helping create Internet gateways, of his work with establishing DBI, his work with the UN, The Gambia, Ghana, South Africa, and elsewhere.

Originally our team had targeted working closely with Dr. Akwule on our LMI project. During discussions, he had cooled on the idea and he gave his reasoning during our discussions. His argument was largely that the amount of time the team would be able to spend on the project would not be sufficient to produce 'real' results that would be useful to 'people like him'. I tend to agree that substantial, large-scale impact studies and research are indeed needed, there are a number of smaller and yet useful projects that can be completed in the time frame.

I would also argue that the likelyhood of success of projects such as ours are very dependent on the cooperation and assistance of people like Dr. Akwule -- that the 'immersion' process of understanding the culture, the situation on the ground, the background material -- all of that could and should begin and proceed throughout the semester culminating in the on-ground experience.

This, in fact, is what we were attempting to do early on in the semester when the original proposal was floated to do this project. One could imagine that with current field support, a small team of researchers could gain a better foundation in which to arrive in country with a well established background, ready to execute. Rather, what ended up was very little ground support with the team having to perform a lot of logistics and catchup work on the ground rather than back home. In my estimation, not the most effective use of our time.

Nonetheless, Dr. Akwule provided many insights into the evironment, some useful advice and perhaps some additional contacts that we can leverage in our reserach. His knowledge of the cyber cafe scene is fairly extensive (even going of into a discussion of C- versus Ku-band satellite capabilties) given that that is one element of the Netpost strategy. His thoughts on this topic could be very useful for our understanding of the situation and a faming of the problem sets.

Diet coke

So, I've been good and haven't had any diet coke (my usual mainstay for beverages back home) since I left ATL. Decided today to give the local Diet Coke a try. Interestingly, Diet coke costs N450 while regular Coke is only N300. Too bad for me! And that is for .5L, so I'm much better off drinking Star beer than Diet Coke!

Back at the pool

Just to torture some of the other teams (I IMd with Mike in Rwanda yesterday and they hadn't showered in like 4 days), here is another picture of how I've been spending my morning.

I'm actually getting something like 491kbps today! Awesome connection, and after about 2 liters of water, I'm feeling much better.

We have a meeting with Professor Raymond Akwule who is a professor at George Mason University and has done a lot of work in ICT4D. The meeting is scheduled at 1PM this afternoon over at the Nikon Hilton....probably go back to the room soon and prepare.

But first, a quick dunk in the pool!

Friday, poolside, and friends

So, Friday afternoon, the wifi network came back to life which made me happy. Hanging by the pool doing work and catching up is a good way to hang.

I was able to skype with my wife (since my cell phone is still lacking a charger, I've been living without and/or leveraging Arvind's phone for connectivity in the vocal dimension). The skype call was great, however, holding my laptop up to my head like a cell phone isn't as comfortable! Actually, it was funny, as our phone call was dropped...but it wasn't on my side, my wife's network dropped the connection -- somewhat ironic, eh?

Also was able to do a bit more research on regional IXPs, still gathering relevant literature and trying to get contacts in country to dig out additional details...

Sun goes down and head back to the room for a bit of relaxing. Around 8, Arvind and I meet up and have a bit of food. He's busy finishing a paper that is due, so Nsikan and Joshua come and pick me up for a bit of eating and drinking.

A very close group that I was able to hang out with – Ben, a soft spoken gentlemen whose wife recently came home, father of 4 (3 boys and 1 girl of 11). Nsikan, my colleague from Tech, who has a rich history within Nigeria with his father having been a well respected official within the foreign affairs(?) department. Joshua, a very vibrant fellow who has a lot to say about the problems within Nigeria and how to solve them. A new fellow I met tonight, Robert(?) who is an officer of Protocol for some lady within the Ministry of Health – not a lot to say, but pleasant to be around. And lastly, Zacharia, a Lietenant Colonel within the Nigerian Army who was exceedingly eager to bend my ear. “Tomorrow, we will talk”, was his incessant murrurm in my ear…

Regardless of their differences, they are a deeply personal people – much regarding the touch of human flesh and the acknowldgement that comes with personal contact. You can feel it, you can see it, you can hear it….nothing goes on without a personal touch. It’s warming to be included and completely embraced by them…there is no way to not just simply enjoy being around them.

It was pleasant and I was able to sample the local cuisine. In particular, I did like the isi ewu (goat head) which had a good flavor. The other one, I think it was cow leg(?) was okay, but not as tasty as the isi ewu. And the last one I declined was the tongue, something that is actually eaten in Nebraska, but not something I've been too interested in over the years.

It was also nice as the Star beer were about N120 for .6L --- so I figured I could get 3 for the price of 1 compared to the Sheraton, so I stocked up!

The crew dropped me back at the hotel and poured me out of the car...

Digital Bridge Institute

FRIDAY

7 AM WAT – time for a Friday! Quick shower, some work in the room, then off to the pool

8:30 AM WAT – poolside, but no Internet access today. Looks like the access point is just fine, but the Internet uplink is toast. Bummer…go find the group and prepare for our 9:30 meeting.

9:30 AM WAT – Arrive at DBI (Digital Bridge Institute) for a meeting with the Director/CEO of the organization. We brief Dr. Olasupo Ogunfemi and his staff on our activities. He apparently has been in communication with Raymond Akuwle regarding our mission, but was waiting for us to arrive to actually discuss it with us. It would have been much better if he had communicated directly with us prior to our arrival in country as we likely could have arranged the logistics a bit better for an effective stay with them…

DBI has as its mission to build human capacity in the ICT sector, offering certificate courses and programs as well as a post-graduate degree program.

We get a tour of the facility, interrupt a class on CDMA and microwave propagation properties to introduce our research, a couple of questions, but mostly welcomes were extended by the students.

The institute has both a vocational and an academic track, the academic track being only 10 weeks old and still under development. They have several active courses going on during most weeks. They bring in industry experts, subject matter experts as it were. Sounds like they get some folk who know their stuff -- 10 plus years practical industry experience in the field they are teaching.

Mostly very centric around telco -- wireless, microwave, vsat, switching and all of the mobile technologies. I asked about the Internet side and he said they do some, but it really sounds almost exclusive on the telephony and very little on the data side. Seems to me a big gap.

They have very nice facilities and at least some of them are being put to good use. They have their own VSAT connectivity with some 1Mbps up and 5Mbps down, allowing them to do videoconferencing.

They have trained some 800 professionals to date and appear to be going strong. Many of the folk in the training have been sent by the operators, others are attempting to get the education/training to join the operators.

We will do a teleconference in mid-January to disseminate the results of our research to DBI and perhaps some of their students.

11:30 AM WAT – Back at hotel – go change into shorts and head to the pool – alas, still no network…very sad…