Congestion control mechanisms, by which network users share constrained capacity on Internet links, are heavily studied in computer science. Such mechanisms are traditionally automated, assuming that users do not wish to be involved in addressing congestion. However, in community-owned and operated…

While only generating a minuscule percentage of global traffic, largely lost in the noise of large-scale analyses, remote rural networks are the physical frontier of the Internet today. Through tight integration with a local operator’s infrastructure, we gather a unique dataset to characterize and…

Hundreds of millions of people still live beyond the coverage of basic mobile connectivity, primarily in rural areas with low population density. Mobile-network operators (MNOs) traditionally struggle to justify expansion into these rural areas due to the high infrastructure costs necessary to…

The radio interfaces and network architectures of WiFi and cellular systems are converging along many dimensions. While both systems are largely adopting the centralized architecture of traditional cellular deployments, this design comes with fundamental disadvantages that limit how these networks…

Repair and maintenance requirements limit the successful operation of rural infrastructure. Current best practices are centralized management, which requires travel from urban areas and is prohibitively expensive, or intensively training community members, which limits scaling. We explore an…

In a setting of economic and infrastructural collapse, the inability to manufacture and maintain computing resources will be an enormous limitation on the continued use of technology. The concept of “rot” exists for both hardware and software, referring to a slow loss of functionality…

This paper analyzes the processes and challenges of technology repair in remote, low-income areas far from standard ICT repair infrastructure. Our sites of study are the fishing and farming villages of Dibut, Diotorin, and Dikapinisan in Aurora Province, Philippines, located in coastal coves against…