SDNP/Pakistan's effective use of dial-up UUCP technology to promote communication in absence of connectivity
We have been fairly successful in setting up a countrywide UUCP network with 4 hubs and more than 5000 client nodes. This may be one of the biggest UUCP networks in the world, especially now that this technology is no longer in extensive use. All our hubs -- and some of our client nodes -- are using Linux, though most of the latter are still using the simple, yet very effective combination of Waffle and Pegasus Mail.Pakistan, as you know, was one of the first few countries to start a national SDNP. Our prime goal was to promote Sustainable Development (SD)through electronic networking, but in the absence of any public networking services (email, Internet) available in the country way back in '93 (whenwe started), we thought it was a good strategy to promote electronic networking per se and hoped that it'll also promote our goal of SD. We chose the dial-up UUCP technology for this purpose.
Our first node was established in Islamabad in March '94, two others in Karachi and Lahore (the two biggest cities in Pakistan) were established one year down the line, and by the end of '95, another node in Peshawar was launched. Apart from inter-city polls between these nodes, sdnhq acted as our international gateway.
Perhaps unlike many other SDNPs, we opened our network for all sectors of the society and charged for our services. But we did offer the most concessional rates to NGOs and other organizations working in the development/education sector. Thanks to sdnhq -- and especially Raul --who made sure to poll us regularly (initially twice a day), we built up a reputation of a very reliable email service. Even now with about 20 national and regional ISPs in the country offering online Internet services, many people prefer to use our UUCP network.
This global email service is supplemented by a host of local discussion lists and newsgroups -- ranging from Information Technology to environment and SD -- some of which have become very popular and give a sense of community to the netters in Pakistan. Many international mailing lists and information downloaded from the net are fed into these local conferences. We also have a number of net publications distributed through this uucp network, and a daily publication of ads and announcements called 'cybermart' -- by far our most popular service which is distributed among all our netters. A public directory consisting of shareware/freeware software utilities, useful info files and archives of net publications has also been created that can be accessed by the users through the 'uucp' command. This public area also duplicates as an anonymous ftp site. These are some of the things that the uucp technology allows one to do and we have tried to use it to our maximum advantage.
Currently we have a 28.8 kbps leased line with a local ISP and poll sdnhq (uucp over tcp/ip) every 20 minutes. The main reason for continuing with this technology is of course the legacy of the undp.org domain (all our incoming mail has to come through the undp network). But it is also very convenient for small organizations which can't get an independent IP address with a leased line to an ISP, the monthly costs for which are quite substantial in Pakistan. Whereas a dialup PPP account that one gets through an ISP allows for a single mailbox, a uucp account can support any number of independent mailboxes which can be set up on a LAN.
We are about to start online services as well but would continue with the use of uucp technology as much and wherever required. More than 80% of our budget for this next phase comes from our 'email' income -- derived entirely from the use of uucp technology. I'll tell you more about our future plans in a subsequent posting.
For more details about SDNP Pakistan's background and experience alongwith useful lessons (that may be applicable for SDNPs in other parts of the world), see Raul and Isa's joint paper presented in INET '95:
The Sustainable Development Networking Programme: Concept and ImplementationHasan Rizvi March 18, 1998
Sustainable Development Phone: 051-270684, 270691 Networking Programme, Fax: 051-270688 POB 3099, #26, Street 87, email: rizvi@sdnpk.undp.org G-6/3, Islamabad, Pakistan.
| Project Summary Status | Africa | Arab States | Asia | Europe/CIS | LA/Caribbean |
