A Low Cost WWW Access Internet Model for Third World Country

Zubair A. Shaikh, Ph.D. Dept. of Computer Science, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA

zas@cs.wayne.edu, zubair@tiger.cs.wayne.edu

Syed Rehan Ahmed, Dept. of Computer Science, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA

sra@cs.wayne.edu

Amjad Shaikh Dept. of Environmental Engineering, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA

ashaikh@mars.eng.wayne.edu

Authors brief Vitae

Dr.Zubair Ahmed Shaikh is currently an Adjunct Faculty in

Department of Computer Science, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA, and a visiting Professor at Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Topi, Pakistan. He is also a Systems Consultant for various national and international organizations. He did his Bachelors in Computer Engineering from Mehran University, Pakistan in 1989, Masters in Computer Science from Polytechnic University, New York in 1991 and received his Doctorate in Computer Science from Polytechnic University, New York and Kennedy Western University, California in 1995. He is author of various research papers in the area of Information Retrieval Systems, Multimedia Applications, Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence. He is member of IEEE, ACM and other professional and honorary societies. He can be reached electronically at zas@cs.wayne.edu

Syed Rehan Ahmed is a graduate student in Department of

Computer Science at Wayne State University. He acquired his B.S in Electronics Engineering from Pakistan. Currently, he is working on various Internet Development Strategies, and on the development of Distributive Multimedia Applications. He can be reached via email at sra@cs.wayne.edu

Amjad Shaikh is a graduate student in Department of Civil

and Environmental Engineering at Wayne State University. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Mehran University, Pakistan in 1990. His area of interest includes the development of computer simulation models and information networks for Environmental Protection. He can be reached via email at ashaikh@sun.eng.wayne.edu

Dr.Shaikh can be reached at Department of Computer Science,

Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202, USA or Department of Computer Science, GIK Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Topi, District Swabi, Pakistan. The document can be accessed at http://www.cs.wayne.edu/~sra.

ABSTRACT:

The Global Internetwork of networks like Internet /

Bitnet, Usenet, Compuserve, BBSs (Bulletin Board Services), WAIS and World Wide Web (WWW) are growing at an explosive pace, providing a vast global and rapidly expanding library of information on every conceivable topic. The dilemma of this information age miracle technology is its popularity and access in technologically developed countries. Third world countries are devoid of these wonders due to various technological and management reasons. Thus resulting in environmental violations, human rights violations, socio- political and economic degradation.

This paper aims at providing a pragmatic strategy to develop a low cost full access Internet Node in such third world countries. A model to serve WWW clients and other Internet features is presented for Pakistan, a South East Asian country with around one billion people. A complete cost and technical analysis addressing the viability of this project are presented. Such low cost effective model is aimed to connect the educational, government, health and UN based other International Organizations like UNDP, WHO and EPA with other WWW servers.

Keywords:

Technology Transfer, Internet In Pakistan, Third World Countries.

INTRODUCTION

Internet has been around since last 25 years. It has

grown from connectivity between few sites to thousands of sites and millions of users. As networking technological products are becoming cheaper, we are witnessing a sharp increase in information connectivity and Internet popularity. The growth is at the rate of 20% in few months [1]. The growth rate is increasing with the growing popularity of World Wide Web.

WWW is described as Wide-Area Hypermedia Information

Retrieval Initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents. Using popular browsing software interface to the Web like Mosaic and Netscape, the Web project has changed the way people view and create information. It has created the first true global hypermedia network. On any given day it connects roughly 20 million users in over 50 countries. There are at least 4,500 hypertext Web servers in use throughout the world. This number is growing at an exponential rate.

But strangely, what we are witnessing is the line of

demarcation between nations which have access to information and those which are devoid of the wonders of WWW. On one spectrum of Internet growth and WWW popularity is the access to Government pages, NASA and other top researches, Environmental and Health awareness, Entertainment and Education - all available almost free of cost in the technologically developed nations. On the other extreme, third world countries like Pakistan are still juggling with email programs due to high networking costs and management issues.

In this paper a frame work of network connectivity

providing access to WWW is presented for third world countries in general and Pakistan in particular.

NETWORKING ISSUES IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES

The name Internet refers to all of those continuously

connected computers that use a method of transmitting packets of data to one another using TCP/IP and other communication protocols like SNA, OSI and MBone. TCP/IP is the most common protocol in use [2]. In order to attain global connectivity, we have to address certain basic connectivity issues. They are:

Communication Lines:

Since TCP/IP protocol breaks information into packets of data, hence communication lines should support PCM (Pulse Coded Modulation). ISDN channels supporting at least 64 kbps transmission rate are the most desired choice for Internet connectivity. Many third world countries are now switching to ISDN networks. Pakistan has recently upgraded most of its telephone communication links to meet single channel ISDN (64 kbps). For WWW access, a minimum of 64 kbps channels are desired.

Equipment Costs:

The basic hardware units required for global connectivity include Routers, Bridges and Repeaters. High speed modems and computers acting as gateways, hubs and servers are also another major requirements. There are other equipments like multiplexers and interface cards which are attached at every node. These equipments are expensive. Typical market price ranges of few important connectivity items are shown in Table 1.

                           Table 1
                              
       Typical Price Ranges of Connectivity Equipments
                              

Types of Connection      Non-Profit     Commercial
Synchronous
     1.5 Mbps (T1)        $ 9,200        $ 12,000
     64  Kbps             $ 7,000        $ 9,000
     54  Kbps             $ 5,200        $ 6,000
     9.6 Kbps             $ 4,800        $ 5,800

Equipment Type             Costs                Connection Types

Routers                  $ 2,500 to $ 6,900       T1
Digital Line Interface   $ 1,700 to $ 2,900       T1
Digital  Line Interface  $ 640 to $  950        56kbps to 64 kbps
Hub                      $ 1,900                56kbps to 64 kbps
                 (monthly maintenance $ 200)
                         $ 2,000                  T1

Awareness Many people in developing nations recognize

the importance of Internet and role of WWW in current information age. But people in third world countries have yet to learn from non-interactive media's like TV and Radio. Hence, the importance of interactive WWW resources is beyond comprehension for many users. In order to develop the sense of awareness, government organizations have to play a vital role.

In Pakistan, the importance of Internet is being

realized at various government and private sections. A UNDP (United Nation Development Program) node along with few private nodes have been established. What we still need to see is the importance of connecting various organizations, educational and research institutes on Internet and WWW.

BASIC INTERNET CONNECTIVITY EXAMPLE

There is no such thing as a typical connection to the

Internet. Every user and every microcomputer that can reach Internet resource do so over different channels and through varying types of services [3]. However, the general process for all users is similar. Most users connect to the Internet through their work or campus network. More recently, additional independent service providers have offered access to individual home computers through dial-up facilities. A generic network model is shown in Figure 1.

As the figure shows, Internet is not a single network,

rather it is a collection of networks. Thus, the campus network, the mid-level network, and the backbone all together are the part of the Internet. In the figure, this is indicated by different thickness in the line (thicker line represents faster speeds).

Many typical connections from the home to the Internet

make use of the university networks. The Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology at Topi Pakistan's campus wide network can be considered as a good example of the wide area network (WAN) and a connection to the Internet. It can be composed of several interconnected local area network LANs throughout the campus. A campus-wide Ethernet system joins many of these smaller local networks, which include building-wide or departmental grouping of computer systems. All of these interconnected systems are known collectively as GIKnet.

The most important components of GIKnet for Internet

access are the mainframes, mini computers, and workstations of the campus computation center. These systems have a dedicated connection. Through a personal or public account on these systems, an individual gains access to Internet resources. These systems offer access to basic Internet applications such as ftp and telnet. In the current setup of GIKnet, Internet services of ftp, telnet are not fully functional. Many users choose a certain machine for Internet access because of its particular operating system and user interface. For instance many people choose UNIX computer because of the compatibility of Internet resources with the UNIX environment and the popularity of UNIX among Internet users. Access to these computers requires either a microcomputer and a modem or an on-campus terminal with a direct connection to the computing center facilities. A user's terminal or microcomputer connects to the mainframe via an intermediary system.

CURRENT STATUS OF INTERNET IN PAKISTAN

A few organizations in Pakistan have been using e-mail

for some time to provide an inter-country communication facility as well as links to their offices abroad. UNDP (United Nations Development Program) with the help of Ministry of Science and Education is trying to expand this e- mail service to other parts of the country.

UNDP current node is in Islamabad, and has regular

electronic mail linkup with its head quarters in New York. Over next few months, nodal point will be established in 4 other sites Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta; which will provide only the e-mail service through a local telephone call to the UNDP node [4]. One of the newspaper reports that "A year ago, it was very hard to find a modem in Islamabad. Now almost every computer shop has a modem to sell." [5]

Some organizations and individuals have been using dial-

up telephone lines to periodically exchange e-mail with their colleagues in other part of the world. The organizations providing email facilities to local users, do this by connecting over dial-up lines to a mail box in some country having full access Internet node. The mail is picked and dropped by the provider for all of its users. Once the mail is picked up, the mails are dropped in individual's local mail boxes by the system manager, who logs on the system only once or twice a day to forward mails to all respective users. Local users are charged for sending and receiving email at per kilobyte rates. Local users can than process their private messages. This is also called off line connection.

In addition, some individuals use a terminal (or a

terminal emulator) over dial up or PDN (Public Data Network) line to log into a central computer located overseas to use e-mail and other basic services. For the most part, access to Internet in Pakistan is limited to email services as described above. Due to various technological and management limitations access to all of the facilities of Internet like ftp, telnet and to access the World Wide Web are not fully available [6].

LOW COST INTERNET MODEL

The basis of low cost Internet model is to connect the

backbone of Pakistan with the neighboring countries already on Internet, by the optimization of distances between links within and outside Pakistan. It also adopts a low cost ISDN alternative for many places of Pakistan and third world countries where ISDN is expensive. The block diagram of the model PakNet is shown in Figure 2.

The Backbone for Pakistan will be established in

Karachi and is called as PakNet. The reason for establishing this node in Karachi is that it has more resources and it is easy to communicate form here to other part of the country as shown in the Figure 3. Besides, establishing the backbone in Karachi, two other local domain nodes will be established in Islamabad and Lahore. They will be connected to the Karachi backbone via dedicated link. However to minimize local communication costs, users can log on to any node in Karachi, Islamabad or Lahore based on the proximity of distances.

After deciding the location, the nearest link available

to Karachi is China, Kuwait, India, Japan and Russia. All these countries have a full access to Internet. So getting the dedicated connection with these countries will also reduce the cost of connection. In this design we have three dedicated connection from the backbone PakNet to China, Russia and Japan as shown in the Figure 2. If any one connection goes down the message will still be routed to another node.

Connection and Naming Convention:

As shown in the Figure 2, we will establish a 64 Kbps dedicated connection from backbone PakNet to China, Russia and Japan. These connections can be upgraded to TI (1.4 Mbps) depending upon the flow of data. In future we can establish more dedicated connection from other cities to the Internet. Since getting too many links of 64 Kbps connection from same city to the Internet is not good. Hence instead of getting too many connections of 64 Kbps, an attempt will be made to upgrade links to a TI connection. The Queuing theory shows that a large capacity link rather than having several small links will greatly reduce the average waiting time in the queue [2].

Before getting the connection we have to establish a

domain name for Pakistan and also the IP address [6]. The domain for Pakistan is ".pk" and the domain structure is shown in the Figure 4. After establishing the backbone PakNet, it is expanded and all the educational institutes are connected to it, for example in Karachi NED University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi University and Aga Khan Medical University, in Islamabad Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute Of Engineering and Technology. Figure 2 shows few of the sites connected to the backbone of PakNet. Not shown in the figure are various government, defense and other organizations. In Hyderabad a dedicated connection of 10 Mbps can be established from Meharn Engineering University to backbone in Karachi. In order to extend the network to other colleges and universities, we can accomplish this by either directly connecting with the backbone or with the Universities that are already connected with the Internet. We can also connect other provinces of Pakistan with the Internet node either by establishing an Internet node in the respective province or by getting a leased line to the backbone PakNet in Karachi or to sub nodes in Islamabad or Lahore.

PakNet also takes advantages of various ISDN features,

when modem speeds are slow, this is a typical case when high speed modems are expensive as generally is the case in many third world countries including Pakistan.

An ISDN basic rate interface is composed of two B

channels at 56 or 64 kbps and one 16 kbps control channel. Many vendors aggregate or inverse multiplex these two B channel into "super-channel" through hardware or software. Though a 28.8 baud modem has an effective communications throughput of 115 kbps with compression, the overall throughput is a function of the amount of compressibility of the data. Text has high compressibility, images do not. Thus, an equivalently compressed ISDN dual B-channel will far exceed the capacity of a 28.8 modem [7].

Hence, for a modest per-month charge and a on time

installation and hardware purchase, a small organization can be on the Internet quickly and easily using PakNet.

Minimum Hardware Requirement for Establishing Internet

Node The minimum requirement for establishing the Internet Node are given as follows:

       (1)  A  computer  with some good  memory  and
            speed,  usually a Sun Spark  Workstation
            would be the better selection.
       (2)  Routers.
       (3)  A network interfacing cards.
       (4)  Dial-in Modems.
       (5)  A  dedicated connection of 64 Kbps to TI
            (1.4  Mbps)  from  the Backbone  to  the
            Internet Cloud is necessary.
 

Software Requirements:

After getting all the connections and establishing the domain, a communication software is needed which can do ftp, telnet and other different things. There are many choices in getting communication software. The basic requirement include a software with WWW browsing capabilities like Netscape which can delay or filter image downloading and email , ftp and telnet capabilities.

Cost Comparison:

The types of connection that we are considering in this design are economical as compared to the type of connection, which UNDP is considering from the backbone in Pakistan to NSFnet in United States. The other important difference between our design and the UNDP design is that; we have three connections from the backbone in Pakistan to the nearest Internet node. While UNDP is proposing only one dedicated connection from Pakistan to NSFnet in United States and the cost for getting only the connection is around $ 200,000 per year. The proposed model has up to 60-75% less overhead and annual maintenance costs. The proposed design is more economical and reliable, because if one connection goes down, the message will still be routed to another node.

Information Management Issues:

One of the major concern of the current information age miracle is the control of information. Due to various cultural and socio-political differences, all of the information on WWW and Internet may not be suitable for all users. Hence, laws can be promulgated to control the information with the consultation of information manager.

Environmental organizations like EPA (Environmental

Protection Agency), many NGO's to let them start their BBS's and newsgroups as is being done throughout the world to inform public, the alarming increase of deadly cancer and AIDS.

REVENUE GENERATION

To generate revenue for the Internet node following are

key points:

 (1) System Should be free for all students and researchers.
 (2) Educational   Institutes   should   pay    for    their
     administrative  use  as they will save  paper,  mailing
     charges,  less  load  and hence lesser  requirement  of
     clerical staff.
 (3) Commercial educational institutes  should also pay  for
     costs and 10% of charges.
 (4) More  than 150 multinational organization are operating
     in  Pakistan  which include banks, petroleum  industry,
     foreign missions in Islamabad and Karachi, construction
     industry etc. If  these are properly "preached",  these
     organization  may  contribute  major  chunk  of  system
     expenses.
 (5) Local   industries,   private  and  semi   governmental
     organizations  will  also pay  for  the  administrative
     costs and extra charges.

Figure 4, illustrates some of the suggested revenue

generating sub-domains. In order to gain full advantage of various Internet resources and the implications of WWW on the economic and social structures and for successful information management and greater revenue generation, brainstorming is necessary, hence, a series of seminars and workshops will be held. These may be designed for separate industries such as banking, textile, NGO's (Non Government Organizations), Federal and Provincial administrations, Public department like Post offices, Railways, PIA (Pakistan International Airline) and Educational organization mainly professional institutes etc.

SUMMARY

Global connectivity using WWW and other Internet

features is more than a technological problem. It involves addressing of various issues from cost, management, security and privacy, information management and control. Third World Countries have many other problems like poverty, environmental hazards, health issues tagged with their social setups. Hence, in order to get such nations on the Information Super Highway, a low budget solution to global connectivity is desired. A model based on the minimization of local communication links and global connectivity with neighboring countries was presented for Pakistan. This model can be adopted by other third world countries with minor modifications according to their geographical setup. A cost analysis and comparison was also presented. Several issues relating to the implication of this model, revenue generation and information dissemination were also highlighted.

REFERENCES

[1]

Krol, Ed (1992). The Whole Internet Users Guide and Catalog. O'Reilley and Associates, Inc. Sebastopol: CA.

[2]

Stallings, William (1994). Data and Computer Communications, 4th Edition. McMillan Publishing Co. New York: NY.

[3]

Obraczka, K., Danzig, P. and Li, S.H. (1993). "Internet Resource Discovery Services". IEEE Computer. Vol. 26, No. 9, September. pp. 8-22.

[4]

Daudpota, Isa. (1995). "SDN programme in Pakistan". Daily Dawn, Pakistan. February 10. pp. 9.

[5]

Ghazi, Nasser (1995). "Data Communication comes of age in Pakistan". Daily Dawn, Pakistan. February 10. pp. 8.

[6]

________ (1995). A Digicom Report on Internet Status in Pakistan. In soc.sulture.pakistan, a USENET report.

[7]

Hughes, Dough. (1995). "ISDN Provides Low Cost alternative for Internet Access". The TInet Report, IEEE Institute. August. pp. 3.