ISIF Asia has awarded USD 1.82 million to 22 projects to support network operations research and development for the benefit of the region.

Infrastructure

  • Expand the Central Australian Desert Project to serve the Nitjpurru indigenous community in Pigeon Hole. Distant Curve Remote Area Telecommunications. Australia. Grant award: USD 150,000.

This impact grant will fund the development of an Internet connection to the remote community of Nitjpurru via an embedded system using solar powered microwave relays. The project will also integrate a framework for supervising various systems needed to run the relays, cost-effectively monitor them, and ensure they are providing the necessary connectivity.
IN PROGRESS

  • Sustainable smart villages in rural Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea University of Technology. Papua New Guinea. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant will help develop a ‘smart village’ in Papua New Guinea that connects mobile devices to enhance education and provide information in the local language, supported by a reliable power system monitored by sensors and calibrated based on machine learning techniques. The project will provide ten community Wi-Fi sites as sustainable services to rural areas, and aims to cultivate partnerships between industry, community, and academic institutions to enhance digital literacy.
IN PROGRESS

  • Field-ready network-coded tunnels for satellite links. The University of Auckland. New Zealand. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This project aims to widen the circle of people able to deploy titrated coded tunnels, create reference systems on actual satellite links in the field, and demonstrate that this technology brings actual performance benefits to real users. This project builds on a previous ISIF Asia project which researched how coded tunnels over satellite links can accelerate individual packet flows. The current project will take it out of the lab and show users that the technology is ready for wider deployment.
IN PROGRESS

  • Hybrid LoRa Network for underserved community Internet. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Malaysia. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This project will deploy LoRa wireless technology to connect the indigenous Orang Asli residents of the Chini Lake, Pahang area of Malaysia. The scale-up grant will help establish a LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) gateway on a helium balloon, equipped with Mesh LoRa architecture that has text and voice messaging capabilities, as well as a cloud-based data management platform.
IN PROGRESS

  • Securing Software Defined Network architectures. The University of Newcastle. Australia. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This project involves the design and development of techniques for detecting attacks on Software Defined Network (SDN) switches. This small grant will implement security techniques to validate against different attacks on SDN switches and develop a Switch Security Application for SDN Controllers for detecting attacks on switches.
IN PROGRESS

Inclusion

  • Connectivity Bridges: Reaching remote locations with high-speed Internet services. Rural Broadband — AirJaldi. India. Grant award: USD 150,000.

This impact grant will help create a hybrid ‘WiFiber’ system that bridges existing infrastructure and adds capability and coverage to reach users in the mostly rural state of Arunachal Pradesh with fast and affordable Internet services.
IN PROGRESS

  • Local community-based Internet infrastructure development and Internet utilization in rural Indonesia. Common Room. Indonesia. Grant award: USD 150,000.

This impact grant will help the School of Community Networking in the Kasepuhan Ciptagelar region of Indonesia to provide necessary infrastructure for a ‘build out’ to extend Internet deployment and training for indigenous and other rural communities in and around seven locations. The project will provide towers, wireless equipment, servers, and training. It will also provide support as community-based Internet is rolled out, to help demonstrate ways the Internet can benefit these communities.
IN PROGRESS

  • Equal access to information society in Myanmar. Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation. Myanmar. Grant award: USD 150,000.

This project will help the Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation combine and scale three programs: Mobile Information Literacy, Tech Age Girls Myanmar, and the Business Startup Development Program. This impact grant will focus on equipping thousands of participants — primarily youth and women — at these 40 additional community libraries to develop digital literacy skills.
IN PROGRESS

  • Broadband for all in Yap. Boom! Inc. Federated States of Micronesia. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This project will establish an island-wide Fixed Wireless Access broadband network on the island of Yap. In 2017, Yap was connected to the world via high-speed submarine fibre-optic cable but there is more work to be done to connect Yap to the cable. In a recent proof-of-concept, Boom! was able to provide high speed connectivity to a school in Yap, having obtained the necessary licence and wavelength agreements. This scale-up grant will extend coverage to other parts of Yap.
IN PROGRESS

  • Bamboo towers for low-cost and sustainable rural Internet connectivity. National Institute of Technology Silchar. India. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This project is a collaboration among the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), National Institute of Technology Silchar (NIT Silchar), and Uravu from India. The project will develop and promote low-cost and sustainable bamboo communication towers to expand access to broadband networks in remote and rural areas of India.
IN PROGRESS

  • OASIS data garden project. SATSOL. Solomon Islands. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant will fund the development and proof-of-concept testing of a ‘data garden’ that will supply affordable connectivity, power, and a digital payment system. An OASIS data garden can be easily transported to any remote location in Solomon Islands via small boat or vehicle, and will operate autonomously. The data garden will support remote villages and communities where it can provide for individuals, households, businesses, schools, and clinics.
IN PROGRESS

  • Internet connection to four villages in San Isidro. Davao Medical School Foundation (DMSF). The Philippines. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This small grant project will connect four villages in the San Isidro municipality of Mindanao via Point to Point (P2P) data connections. DMSF will partner with local organizations in each village to develop local capacity for maintenance and security.
IN PROGRESS

  • Inclusive and efficient access to Internet services and information for persons with disabilities in Bangladesh. Humanity & Inclusion. Bangladesh. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This project aims to assist people with visual disabilities in Bangladesh, by disseminating standards on accessible web design and screen-reading software. The project, funded with a small grant, will translate visual accessibility standards into the local language and train web developers in these standards. It will also engage in policy dialogue and advocacy for people with disabilities.
IN PROGRESS

  • Empowering remote agricultural communities in Lao PDR through long-range wide area networks. Makerbox Lao. Lao PDR. Grant award: USD 30,000.

The small grant will help develop a prototype technology that uses long range (LoRa) wireless networking to relay agricultural data (such as soil, weather, and water information) from sensors in remote areas of Lao PDR to forecasting experts, then relay that forecast information to farmers in a format that supports their work.
IN PROGRESS

Knowledge

  • Intelligent honeynet threat sharing platform. Swiss German University. Indonesia. Grant award: USD 150,000.

This project will fully extend the design of the existing Honeynet Threat Sharing Platform [PDF] to provide a broader range of honeypot support, with intelligently categorized and correlated threat data, enabling organizations to share and exchange the threat information with other organizations with a consistent format.
IN PROGRESS

  • Developing a collaborative BGP routing, analyzing and diagnosing platform. Tsinghua University. China. Grant award: Grant award: USD 150,000.

This project is a collaboration between National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and research universities in the Asia Pacific, to build the kind of trust and BGP capabilities among NRENs that the wider BGP-speaking community relies upon. An earlier but ongoing project resulted in the development of a small-scale looking glass platform and BGP routing collection platform. This impact grant will expand the platform to a BGP hijacking detection and mitigation system and foster the emerging NREN network operations and security community.
IN PROGRESS

  • Bug Zero. SCoRe Lab. Sri Lanka. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant will help promote bug bounties as an effective tool for organizations in Sri Lanka, while also promoting them as a good economic opportunity for youth and encourage inclusion in an area that has generally been male-dominated.
IN PROGRESS

  • Training and knowledge sharing: Network analysis for AI transformation. TeleMARS. Australia. Grant award: USD 85,000.

This scale-up grant will help implement the work of a previous ISIF Asia AI-driven cybersecurity project on a larger scale. This will involve strengthening knowledge sharing across Network Operator Groups (NOGs) and Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), developing training and mentoring resources, and improving professional capabilities in the areas of diagnosis, monitoring, and analysis of historical datasets.
IN PROGRESS

  • Webinar series to support IPv6 knowledge transfer. India Internet Engineering Society (IIESoc). India. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This project will continue a series of webinars that have helped enterprises develop IPv6 skills, supported by ISIF Asia through a 2020 grant. This small grant will continue and expand the webinars in an effort to combat a cycle of misinformation that makes enterprises hesitant to adopt IPv6.
IN PROGRESS

  • DIY COW — An inclusive community operated wireless kit for enabling local communications at remote locations. Servelots Infotech. India. Grant award: USD 30,000.

Using lessons learned during remote mentoring for young women in COVID-19 lockdowns, this project will create a Do It Yourself kit that will allow someone with no Internet access to set up a wireless access point with a local access server. This small grant will help develop kits that allow for the rapid establishment of a server capable of hosting applications that can immediately be used by the community.
IN PROGRESS

  • Cybersecurity education. Passerelles Numeriques Cambodia. Cambodia. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This project will create fun and accessible online learning content on security issues faced by the public and organizations while navigating the Internet. It will develop simple interactive videos and quizzes to test awareness and develop public knowledge about security threats they encounter in their daily lives.
IN PROGRESS

  • Design, development and operation of an SDN-based Internet eXchange playground for networkers. University of Malaya. Malaysia. Grant award: USD 30,000.

This small grant will help build on existing training programs by developing an ‘Internet Exchange Playground’ with a Kubernetes cluster that can help introduce SDN-based BGP/RPKI/RDAP knowledge. The Kubernetes nodes will be scattered across different economies, allowing participants to experiment with cross-border network topologies. It will allow for use of VXLAN and SDN controllers in a WAN environment.
IN PROGRESS