# Tales from the Field - Using Ethereum for a Decentralized ISP in Rural America (Devcon5)

- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2020-10-09
- Duration: 26:48
- Topics: blockchain, smart contracts, distributed ledger, ethereum, Science & Technology
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-YN6tAFIK3aU
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN6tAFIK3aU

## Description

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https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/5/tales-from-the-field-using-ethereum-for-a-decentralized-isp-in-rural-america

My rural town of 1800 people suffered from lack of internet access. In this talk, I'll explore how we built a decentralized, crypto powered ISP to solve that problem. Homeowners, businesses and farmers own different components of the network and earn ethereum for forwarding bandwith, instead of using large towers and centrally held infrastructure, Everyday people buy eth on their phones and load it into their routers to pay for internet. Building a network in this agile and versatile way has allowed us to reach people more efficiently and provide cheaper and faster internet service. Which means Linda's flower farm is earning eth just for having a few antennas in her yard, and young Beatrice can do her homework at home now instead of the library. 

Speaker(s): Deborah Simpier
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Society and Systems


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Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/ 

Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. 
Devcon 5 was held in Osaka, Japan on Oct 8 - 11, 2019.
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## Transcript

[Applause] yeah and I am excited to share with you all how we built in decentralized whereas Internet service provider and rural Oregon so this is cos tonight I'm the chair for about 13 years it's a kind of a typical world community it has a sparse population some challenging geography large Douglas fir trees these hills and mountains and folks that are working for us and lower income and like many rural areas it also suffers from lots of folks that don't have very good access and it's very slow for us to see people in our community with a megabit per second of Internet no access at all because if satellite or cost as a barrier this is too expensive but there is actually other internet service providers in this area that I tried to connect people and stop these folks and not been very successful and also in fact about five years ago there was a our USDA grant to serve a mix of wireless and fiber infrastructure with some of the outlying areas that also suffered from many things that we see is very typical with fancy programs there wasn't a lot of accountability when I was sure that actually didn't practice or those folks that they they had promised to do and one of the big key things is those know sustainability so the money was dropped into the community and then as the wireless infrastructure age the Internet service provider had no incentive to continue to put money and resources back into my connection and this also isn't the whole story it's not just that these folks have no internet access in fact a long time of that main corridor through town the main highway and then access is actually very good we can get itself megabits per second and as fiber and it's portable but anything beyond that one well that one kind of narrow corridor there's no ability to get that internet access to those folks in outlying areas but there is a better way is that one company owning all of the infrastructure of the network Alphaeus software lets us leverage the existing homes and businesses in an efficient way and they'll in a centralized network where a person pay each other for bandwidth and this is accomplished by people in the community you know their homes or the businesses are farm they host some hardware that might look like other than an antenna or some cables and then they get paid automatically with the software to host us and here's an example of what that looks like right here so that top antenna is connected to a high speed fiber backhaul in the community and then that bottom it said they won't skinny sector antennas connected to his neighbors and then both of those cables route to the elfia runner in this house that provides his internet access does all the property and the building automatically and this creates you know sort of a viral and sensitive or for the network girls that happens automatically in fact um Matt will look like about once a week take a bottle alliance and his neighbor's house and see if they wanted to connect it to the end of that it is pretty fact I do get up and this is a curator both in a local group of the folks that help if there's problems or they want to help you people install that kind of thing and in this sort of a configuration that says like lower the build-out costs so instead of that one essential antenna that if you can only get at a crane or that you can only get the people within that few said about Central antenna we're able to sort of configure this network in the Agilent dynamic way and this also creates more equitable governance so here is kind of good idea what the internet looks like today right so you have the discreet connections with proprietary hardware from from each of you and that service providers in your area and you know legacy Internet users paying high prices for slow speeds because the last node networks a style of brightest ownership and have a really long long walk in but here's about Thea and I've heard he creates like one open network I made a little different different orders and the network uses all these things available to you know dynamically switch between different Internet service providers using different orpheus' and intercept service providers and using all the links available using the best speeds and offering a copy I don't super internet for everyone so if you're something that the customer network so you can kind of see so class and I we set up a Nokia and work in there's about 40 users on there right now and you can see that sort of agile and different ownership such wise ownership that we have here each of these different colors is a different reading this forwarding bandwidth to their neighbors and using their own home to put some a ton of hardware on there's another example there to work out with to their neighbors and one of the kind of exciting things about via is that you use a price aware of our routing protocol and so what that does that instead of only selecting the best routes based on the total round-trip time we're also taking the cost of no effect and so that makes sort of an automatically competitive link so not only are people instead of ice to set up new links and add more capacity I think those are too expensive it's nice to set up competitive things and we can encrypt you grip the whole that worked with with wire guard and using a and like what we call the exit node which is just like a VPN or server adds a sensor and that that server also that I said node also verifies all the routes and the prices on are advertised as well and this is done by by you the neighbors paying for the bandwidth I was taken by perk if I excuse me with it the area where X I so listen even so this is another one of our be ladies here I see so far over and she's got that I really long green there enough who be a spy it was kind of out the valley area very difficult to reach area otherwise and this is so there's not really moving poor oxes before and so she she has their incentive here has an incoming connection at the top those two connections those two antennas brought to her her neighbors and her mother her Althea Robinson house is often dropping and the building and also provides her Wi-Fi access and her home her connection automatically so for her to discuss her internet and her cost is offset from the that about six connections that she house on that honor that connected to her and you can see this is casually it's kind of blurry you can see the connections I'm going out for her fermer easy just coming in from her for Connecticut neighbors and there's some of those minutes minutes a neighbor's so this is also a really great case did this is mrs. Clark here and he he's up on that hill from that and so he is another hop and that serves wait out to be very far reaches to the valley they're having a heart failure typical to get an area that we would not be able to get otherwise and you know one of the the farmers and then this is 10 over the top I don't have a picture of her but this is the some of that is on resources house and this one is really like exciting stories about how this technology moving makes an impact on communities Beatrice had no internet for four years and prior to this because of costs and you know she's a 16 or something so her and her with four of my siblings were staying late after school or going to libraries the Internet to their work and with her her parents are also worked you know they will jobs and so then the family just never saw each other this is really you know just impacting their quality of life so she's aim to be connected to her thirty Melinda told her about it and - you know even pay for what she uses and it's affordable and it's you know 40 50 megabits a second it's that you know the the only other alternative is like you know may have a per second so one of you know anyone would see her the damn excited out she came out pull their laptop to say you know this is this is the best day ever and I think it really is amazing to see those those values in place and another thing that I think is kind of interesting is that when we first up this project up we so love my neighbor who said my community members on faster in about at cheaper internet that's just really simple value propositions but as the network has evolved and United more people I start to hear people talk about ownership and choice and some of these other ideals that you know envision decentralized networks so this is an example of like you know we have multiple connections is sort of redundancy and resiliency that we didn't see silence as well so both of these antennas are connected to different relays it's actually to be kind of dumb enough on bottom right hand corner there and this the writing protocol will select the route on a second-by-second basis based on the round-trip time and the world cost so it also if one of the it's one of the relays were to go down this I danced with brought back for the other relay so right now people are using aetherium to to pay for their internet they buy a serial on a coin they stop right now or they could they could buy with anything but you said it's our card and then they send it to the router wallet by scanning a QR code on there on the router and the router house brother then also gives us our building and so usage information keep up to date on that and then when the and then what a balance is looking a text message so it's really pretty simple on word processor folks pretty easy to understand with values there and one of the new things that we've just recently the mid suicide which is very exciting is that people buy an area miss head of the etherium sue their router wallet we have any bridge so then it'll bridge to do bridges 2x i to sink my table and that's not just about seeing this a in their honor and then the payment settles when on the the gas is 5% of the total transaction so you'll see sometimes in high pass times you know they want some up for an hour to something so it didn't want to touch briefly as well on the fact that these are these are actually community members that have no experience with ethereal cryptocurrency prior to I'm going to use it to pay for their internet it since reading is pretty exciting stuff and actually about 1/3 of my network senior citizens so yeah it's really exciting and I found it a couple of couple of things one is if we spend a little bit of time during that mongering process on a one-on-one basis and goes pretty smoothly and then after that I just sort of initial me even just 10 or 15 minutes at one of my time folks are able to use that on an ongoing way a couple of other things I notice too is that we use the terms and digital currency it's a crypto and payment app this set of exchange and even just from simplifying up those two key turns has led to I think a lot less friction than we normally scene so we do also recognize though that at this point networks aren't earning to necessarily totally autonomously people to have customer support question is that they may need help with things so we have what we call work erasers and this is just you know people within their local community that set up so typically go ahead any week I get a lot of see we have that in one of our networks or a non-profit or cooperative and a couple of them the one in the house can is a member of a cooperative and these so these simple people help us all support the network but they're also incentivized as well so they're in sideways suit with a local ad prorated subscription fee which is also automatically debited from the router seamlessly for the end-user so they can they can partner with other people to set up on you know the relays the gateways and the other pieces of hardware in the network but still we see the separate sunset so the honor and beyond the rural environment we're really excited to see some of these new networks coming on board here very very very soon this is a couple cooperative Network there area south of Seattle Washington and they should be watching Aaron within the next 60 days the we took them through what we call our off the in this program so that's basically a pre-registration Diana if any of you are familiar with Brockman community there's there's a thing called fiber than Google didn't where you might've gone into an area get people to pre-register kind of front-load that user acquisition this would really well so these they started out about June with their pre registration sites and marketing materials and support from us and they have about they haven't eighty people now pre-register their it would be close to their their 100 threshold by the time they're cheap about then we have a couple more networks as well one in the Napa area of California and in Abuja Nigeria that will be starting as well and more people that are down getting imported together in this process we find it takes about especially since it takes a while to get back cool as hell fiber connection it takes people over to at four and six months to go from there pre-registration exciting to shovel in the dirt so just kind of surmise via networks are owned and run which is another sort of I think really excited about the proposition is that the the revenue and the economic potential of the network is is happy in that community instead of someone coming to the area and stock do not economic benefit it stays their own the community this share amongst the community members it has a built in competition it's the price we're around protocols and always inside advise people to set up out of my competition it's as they creates my automatic sustainability so as a supply cement network continues to expand there always be us that then insensate side for more bandwidth because it is paid for Houston which you always want a lot of how people use more rain and a bit more I don't know benefit and it's like a very true period of clear statement in your Labor's paint neighbors for bandwidth of the enables communities but essential as networks creating faster and cheaper internet for everyone thank you and I thought if you want me to do some questions if there's time we're going to questions I don't wanna get started you know just talking on video showing the or that's what Sylvia means and Howell because in the end is selected boom it's an investment for them to know or don't they have any initial costs and they - stop - so the question was how you convince people to invest more aware so you talked about in the case of these relays you saw with the antennas they're either there's a very easy ROI so like Linda's making 100 bucks every couple of months so it was pretty easy compete with six users so actually have four using you can look at what that is per month and I think she has about you know six or seven hundred dollars would've been okay so we're gonna just kind of common or interface with relays and let them know about what they can expect in terms of costs to the equipment what they can expect for revenues that was not your question okay the router is welcome welcome Pete they brought another it's a one-time fee yes super networks of the stock differently so they like the old film network of is it's a higher income area so they pay up front from the equipment I'm in the installation whereas in like the network in the scrum a cooperative Network it's lower income areas the organs which are subsidized and some of that cost as well I'm gonna have a router here too so if anybody wants to buy it later you can with us for a little bit I think you've been asking for a while yeah sorry if you already said it I didn't like that check like legal issues of the ISPs is this basically like one contract the one consumer and then they're sharing it how are you communicating with a backbone and an older and would it be any potential light corporation there yeah that's a good question so when we said these networks up we bring in a whole self image and that's gonna be solvable connection and then you call us up at the gateway right so someone in the network is actually behind back haul to direction of monoxide transit or transmitter or something that's resolvable right and it from that anchor point and then of course all agree that it's going to be solve a problem with the healthy networks ask about that as far as legal issues in the United States very very simple for ISP shops but a forum for 7/7 which they've indicated to us that we do because we're aware so the exit node how that personally so that so that can get hurt but it is what we call the Gateway location and so it basically works like a relay they get got was up by over backhaul and many of the dark outside because I'm also connection it'll very expensive though and it's sold in the contract so that it's typically a business person that comes in and does them because it's it's a little bit lower ry a little bit more money that kind of thing sorry reciting from the collar of some law and be less I'm not actually this mean that the red person right next note is responsible for the content or the congregations of a community so how are the legal issues compliance have there been the episodes somebody not yet actually gonna be but yeah that's the responsibility and this further Network we have here obviously the exit go for that and the vision is the user world that many different accent they can choose from but yeah and that's the point in the internet service provider where you're done is turning onto the rest of the internet so that's always going to be the one is responsible for that and we don't want the current saw bouncer doing there I mean obviously not there you have to see right place setting a microwave chance they're excited so I was just wondering if you had any problems again its little patience I don't care but the learner City so we operated in the unlicensed spectrum of a fighting arts so if we were to combine it there and then in this coma cooperative Network we'll be using on the chair biking it hurts my license my children 60 gigahertz which is the millimeter even so we'll be able to push on even higher speeds but that's also fun nice things so you know free to use within power limits which we the antennas are already configured in that way so in different areas incentives are kind of the air because you don't have much options but for example in those incentives that people have to put some troubles yeah well yes I've been serving I think there's about 12,000 people in the neighborhood in just a few blocks and it's faster than the current offerings honestly less expensive and it's community - OH the brightest we already got any people to sign up to start so you like points the neighborhoods that make sense the Putin says yes yeah absolutely so we do what we do guys impose people people you should just come to us and say I want to run at the end and then we're committing or but it's great let's look at it what we do find isn't you know everybody's angry with big telecom but that either isn't enough to get people to switch trades like you know maybe one to three percent a great base just on people think company here but yeah a million orders to be by well we do also you know work with people to look at their markets in the Sahara going to be able to have traction here but you know what I'll say when you go into these neighborhoods and and then to the hilltop neighborhood and worked with the organizers there everyone wants to be remade they want to know how they can make money with their you know favorite hangout space on the road sorry I don't remember this first I'm so sorry so we always want our users to be able to use something easy to get like etherion and something stable that died so that's that we don't want people that are subscribing to have any kind of Wick oh so so the so the eventual plan what we're working on now is that right now as these transactions take place by for psychosis etherion miners right so our thing is that we are going to bridge to nong khiaw died and then an off via token that is built on cosmos and then they'll see yourself at home to collect five percent of the of the transaction teens in the network so as the network grows yes yeah that's a good question um so yes but Thea is some friends on that consumer heart of heart rather the people's house so whatever antennas you connect to that it's agnostic to it so you saw that ubiquity near here and it's a coma community cooperative Network that's going to be thinking might pretend 60 gigahertz that kind of thing and so each of one of those antennas has limitations based on the antenna hardware so the room where they saw their that big sector is you know they can take about thirty two points of about performance and the smaller ones a little skinny guy a list of time so he but it's agnostic so whatever you want to use with the news TV right spaces of those islands you can we can fly since my salsa purpose so it doesn't matter you took private between you and they're not the end no it's about me like that way wonderful itself bill very softly yeah so I have that since this is consumer are available online our software is open to the ort base it's open source and you just watch them onto the router table set question still on everybody do we do so best effort support raspberry pie but one thing where I was required by the time you get the case and you get the Wi-Fi announcement that this is seventy bucks on Amazon so yeah alright well thank you very very much it's been fun [Applause]