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Minutes interim-2020-gaia-01: Mon 17:00
minutes-interim-2020-gaia-01-202004201700-00

Meeting Minutes Global Access to the Internet for All (gaia) RG
Date and time 2020-04-20 17:00
Title Minutes interim-2020-gaia-01: Mon 17:00
State Active
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Last updated 2020-05-13

minutes-interim-2020-gaia-01-202004201700-00
**GAIA WG Notes Interim 2020-01**

2020-04-20 Online

Slides:
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/interim-2020-gaia-01/session/gaia>

Note takers: Leandro Navarro, co-chair

Introduction: Jane Coffin, co-chair

Talks:

**Data Sourcing for Community Networks & Public Policy**

Speaker: Maureen Hernandez, Article19

About collecting data from different papers, mapping visually, owned by the
community. Not all community networks but community oriented. In 5 countries.

Q/C: David: comment about geo-spacial map, ways to add new points.

Q: Luis: sources for information about grants for rural connectivity in the USA.

A: can be listed.

**Communities, iNethi and the pandemic**

Speaker: David Johnson, UCT

A description of iNethi, context, the community, the portal and voucher system,
services.

COVID-19 related actions: relevant information and infographic docs, zero
rating sites (gov sites, easyclass.com), download web content copy in local
portal, selling local pastries, network measurements

Q: when it started, how large
A: 2018, about 26000? people in the community

Q: any recent change on traffic, usage
A: changed splash for more educational content, ted talks, and specially
videos, wikipedia.

Q: how many users
A: 300 internet users on 10 WiFi hotspots, not clear how many using free
content, perhaps few thousands

Q: resources
A: in the direction of being self-maintained from the income from paid vouchers.

**Education in times of pandemia**

Speaker: Luis Martinez, ISOC-MX

Effect of COVID19 on the education system, management of disruption, and
scenarios

Distance learning at every educational level started immediately

Difficulties: makes education more difficult, sometimes sadly students can
connect but don’t know what to do.

Limitations in pedagogical model for this situation

Distance learning vs online learning (learning away from school due to sudden
pandemic situation)

Adaptation: better adapted if they were doing already online. Some institutions
closed as they cannot continue online, or for fairness, because not every
student has the possibility to followup

Screens were a distraction in the classroom, now there other distractions at
home. Disruption creates new opportunities.

Difficult choices: eat or study, etc.

Social distancing: what will happen when we go to school, social distance, lack
of group activities, in a paced way, avoidance of contact and propagation of
waves of infection.

Other options for connectivity: sharing at community level, promote ethical use
of those connections, easing connection to internet, some ways to ease access
to certain content, improve cybersecurity.

More offline strategies for next waves. We keep learning.

Q: Jane: mapping of hotspots, libraries sharing hotspots where people can go
and get connectivity from outside. A: People drive-in to restaurants,
cafeterias, libraries to make homework from parkings. Must be done in an
ethical way. Operators are not cutting access when no payment. Reliance on
neighbors

Q: David: CN got permits because they support critical infrastructure.
Added hotspots in townships. We may not build new CNs but we can expand
connectivity in new areas. A: supermarkets have open hotspots

**SDN IXP architecture for IXPs**

Speaker: Marc Bruyere (IIJ - Univ Tokyo)

Description of the architecture, full stack solution

IXP-Manager: powering 92+ IXP

Q: distributed IXP, any interop issue

**Progress in the Locnet project**

Speaker: Mike Jensen, APC

Description of Locnet:
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), is continuing with its
efforts to support small scale independent communications
infrastructure-building initiatives under the Locnet programme which has
recently received funding commitments for the next two years from Swedish Sida
and the UK's Department for International Development. The work will involve
pushing for policy and regulatory change to be more conducive to small scale
networks, and continuing to build the capacity of the many local community
networks in the global South that APC had begun to work with in 2019, including
providing platforms and resources for knowledge exchange and for the
development of networking equipment and other hardware and software tools that
are needed by these networks. The support from DfID leverages its Prosperity
Fund which focuses specifically on Brasil, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and
Indonesia, where APC will be able to focus more intensively on building
sustainable community networks in these countries over the next 24 months.

Q: Barriers

incremental changes, policies, TVWS regulatory framework, gradual opening up of
mobile spectrum, exemptions, capitalize on success stories. We are not seeing
rapid scaling due to barriers (spectrum. but also lack of diversity

COVID situation has given impetus to connecting the unconnected

**No child offline: guifi.net, eReuse.org and the pandemic**

Speaker: Leandro Navarro, UPC

A description of how the COVID lockdown, the challenge of all activities
remotely, particularly participating in school from home. Initiatives to
support: support networks for families, connectivity (sharing, community
networks, connectivity operators), devices (new and reused, the role of
volunteers and social enterprises offering computers, tablets, mobiles,
routers), services (conferencing, storage, intranets) and a spike of
demand for limited resources (volunteers, professionals), and initial
lessons: more connectivity =&gt; more devices, more ewaste
(traceability, accountability of environmental impact), more coverage
(Internet as a global public good / commons).

**AOB: Next steps for GAIARG, including Update of RFC 7962 "Alternative Network
Deployments..." August 2016 (5 m)**

Presenter: Leandro Navarro, UPC

Reflections about how to update that document either with an update
about technology or about complementary aspects.

**Closing: next meeting**

Presenter: Jane Coffin, ISOC

Planning for a meeting about community networks together with IETF108 in
Madrid end of July or online.

More information on our website
[http://irtf.org/](http://irtf.org/gaia) [gaia](http://irtf.org/gaia),
join the list: <https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/gaia>.