Design and implementation of the KioskNet system
S. Guo, Mohammad Hossein Falaki, Earl A. Oliver, Shams Rahman, Aaditeshwar Seth, Matei Zaharia, Ukasha Ismail, Srinivasan Keshav · 2007
Rural Internet kiosks in developing countries can cost-effectively provide communication and e-governance services to the poorest sections of society. Unfortunately, a variety of technical and non-technical issues have caused most kiosk deployments to be unsustainable [1]. KioskNet addresses the key technical problems underlying kiosk failure by using robust ‘mechanical backhaul’ for connectivity [2], and by using low-cost and reliable kiosk controllers to support services delivered from one or more recycled PCs. KioskNet also addresses related issues such as security, user management, and log collection. In this paper, we describe the KioskNet system and outline its hardware, software, and security architectures. We describe a pilot deployment, and how we used lessons from this deployment to re-design our initial prototype.