Introduction
Unimas are proposing a project to install ePingER hosts in remote Sarawak communities such as Bario in the Kelabit highlands. Initially these would simply be PingER targets responding to pings. Later depending on bandwidth availabilty etc. They could also be turned into PingER monitoring hosts and a web site.
They have remote sites in Kelabit Highlands in Barrio. There is a wireless network. the hosts are solar powered. They could install an ePinger host and ping from Unimas via the VSAT connection. Could be a month or two to set the host at Bario up. There are other telecenter sites that are similar. They could also put up hosts in these places. These telecenters include: Long Lamai, and Ba Kalalan.
There is also interest in ePingER, e.g. for other major sites in Malaysia and even the Kelabit highlands where its low power requirements and low cost together with the ability to host applications such as a web accessible PingER monitoring station, could be very advantageous to quantitatively study the network performance, and provide reports for decisions makers and funding agencies on how to improve the network.
An ePingER App for an Android or iOS might also be an interesting project.
UNIMAS 2-3 ePingER machines. They had some difficulty finding a distributor in Asia. They eventually went with Raspberry Pies.
Potential Hosts
ICTP
The folks at the ICTP provided an update to the embedded system used for ePingER.
The ITCP folks responded concerning the ePingER embedded Linux board:
“Yes, we still work with the Alix boards. An alternative is the http://www.raspberrypi.org/. It is much cheaper but, from what I understand, does not run a standard Linux distribution. I have not tested it, so I am not sure about the low power features.We just used http://tyconpower.com/ for a project in Micronesia, and they worked well”.
SLAC
Yee Ting Li of SLAC reports:
Hello,
yeah, i purchased one a while back. it's a very nice device. power wise it needs >1amp @ 5v - so a normal usb mobile phone charger would work for example. it uses a mini-usb connector for this.
i did have some issues with the power input on mine: a normal iPhone charger (e.g.) didn't work - the machine would boot, but then the (single) network ethernet port wouldn't. it wasn't until i used an amazon kindle charger (rated at 1.8amp @ 5v) that it was completely useable. YMMV.
there are also 2 usb 2.0 ports on the device (with relevant power draw) which can be used to connect wifi cards etc. but i've read that keeping certain items powered will require a beefier power supply.
i run debian on the box; so all the standard apt-get's etc work great from it. dd'ing the image was easy; and i was able to install onto a 2GB SD card. although i guess a 4GB would be better (because a 2GB image is not always <2GB).
you can also run arch linux on it, although i'm not sure why you would bother.
the only downside to the device is that lack of cover/box for it. it comes as a circuit board only. it's just a little too big for an altoid's tin. it can also get a little hot (to the touch), so ventilation holes would be required. production volumes are still quite low at the moment (and they're coming out with a 512MB version as standard), so you might have to look through ebay for one (and pay more).
It's now available with all sorts of accessories.
Malaysia
UNIMAS went with the Raspberry Pie.
Project
Johari is exploring creating a custom built Ubuntu/PingER installation. Based on what he learnt from giving the tutorial on installing PingER he is improving the process. The idea is that if we could get a corporate sponsor then we could send preconfigured PingER monitor units to new monitoring sites to simplify things.
Experience
The first attempt ran into reliability problems with the flash memory. There is a comparison of the performance of the Raspbery Pi (pinger2) vs that of a more traditional server (pinger) at Comparison of PinGER RTTs from UNIMAS monitors N4 and RASPBERRY
There is a comparison of the two hardwares at http://pinger.unimas.my/pinger/hardware.php
We tried again in July 2014. Since the SBC does not have CMOS battery on-board we had to use NTP to keep time.
As of September 2014 it appears to be working successfully at UNIMAS. To compare we gathered the data from the Raspberry Pi (pinger2.unimas.my) using:
and from the other monitor at UNIMAS (pinger,unimas.edu) using:
http://www-wanmon.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/ping_data_plot.pl?monitor=pinger.unimas.my&sites=pinger.slac.stanford.edu&begin_day=2&begin_month=9&begin_year=2014&end_day=12&end_month=9&end_year=2014&data
The spreadsheet of the data is here.
