Photo 1: Installation of the satellite dish and the WiFi hotspot.
Photo 2: Overview of the school with the satellite dish already installed.
Photo 3: A closer image of the satellite dish and the WiFi access point with the small the omni-directional antenna
Photo 4: The procedure for the satellite antenna pointing.
Photo 5: The technical team of ICCS configuring the DVB/RCS system into one of the school classes.
Photo 6: View of the Valtetsiniko village from the school. The WiFi is operational.
Photo 7: WiFi connection at the central square of the village.
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RURAL WINGS 2nd Installation – Valtetsiniko, Greece
Location
Valtetsiniko is a village in Arcadia prefecture situated at the central rural mountaineer area of Peloponnesus periphery almost 65 Km from Tripoli, which is the capital of the Arkadia prefecture. The road to the village from Tripoli or Athens is moderate, although it can sometimes especially in the winter be not so easily accessible due to snow and other severe weather conditions. The village is built amphitheatrically on the stands on a mountain slope at the height of 1050 meters. The prefecture of Arcadia is the fourth-largest Prefecture in Greece. Despite all its beauty, the population of Arkadia- and mainly of the upland areas in particular- has been falling constantly in recent years. People have moved out in search of a better life in Athens and abroad. Life is hard in isolated villages in the forests and mountains and Valtetsiniko is one of the most evident cases of this fact.
Background Information
Valtetsiniko is a lively rural community with almost 400 permanent residences, which has followed the developments described in the previous paragraph referring to the whole prefecture. The village is a typical example of rural and isolated mountaineer Greek communities, which were almost deserted during the decades of 1960 and 1970, following the faith of all rural areas in Greece. It should be mentioned that the population of the village has decreased from 2500 in the past decades to 400 now days. Only over the past decade this phenomenon has been partially reversed due to the new economic activities that have been undertaken by the inhabitants. These activities are mainly the mountain tourism, the construction or the renewal of traditional Arkadian houses, the production of wooden furniture for which the village is famous, the cultivation of potatoes and the harvesting of sheep and goats. The village is also very well known for its honey. These economic activities have given new life to this village and have led many young people to stay to their homeland working either in tourism or in the constructions (10% of the permanent population is below 35 years). Currently there are three traditional small hotels operating in the village which can host around 60 tourists and are open for all the year. Additional the village has 1 café restaurant, 2 taverns and a small shop selling traditional wooden souvenirs, gifts and accessories. Valtetsiniko is the largest village of the municipality and for this reason it hosts a peripheral medical office and a central administration office (KEP).
Education and lifelong learning in the village
There is a multi grade school in the village, currently featuring 19 students and 6 pre-schools students, with three primary school teachers. This school is the only operating primary school of the municipality which consists of 9 remote communities. The school has some old PCs for the training of the students which are currently being partially replaced with new ones. All the new PCs that are being installed now are donations from companies or other public authorities. The village also has a Cultural Center. In photos 1, 2 and 3 the reader can see an overview of the Mutligrade School with the installed satellite antenna and a closer view of the installation procedure by the technical stuff of ICCS and of the satellite dish with the WiFi hot spot equipment.
Implementation of a hybrid satellite-terrestrial broadband access network
Despite the recent rapid economic growth and the partial reversal of the de-population of the region, the community completely lacked a broadband gateway to the world. The only connection to the internet available in Valtetsiniko was PSTN dial-up or ISDN through the terrestrial telephone network. Although ADSL has recently reached many places in Greece, the possibility of terrestrial broadband infrastructure reaching the village in the future decade is scarce, because of the small population, the low usage percentage foreseen for ADSL which makes the investment not cost effective and the geographical characteristics of the area. Therefore the satellite broadband connectivity offered through RURAL WINGS is an ideal solution for this isolated rural community. An architecture consisting of a DVB-RCS terminal and a WiFi system (photo 3), in order to provide internet WiFi connectivity with satellite link as a gateway, has been implemented in this pilot site. The aforementioned hybrid system has been installed at the School at a high point of the building (photo 4) over viewing the greater part of the village (photo 6). The satellite link is achieved via the Greek-Cypriot satellite Hellas-Sat and internet services are provided by Hellas-Sat SA.
The last-mile WiFi access is provided within a basic service set maintained by an 802.11b/g access point. A router is used in order to route the incoming and outgoing traffic from and towards the satellite Wide Area Network’s (WAN) subnet. The required connectivity parameters (host IP address, subnet mask, gateway IP, DNS servers’ IPs) are assigned to the wireless users associated with the open no security constrained access point, through a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server residing in the router. Taking into consideration the available satellite capacity, a limitation to the number of IPs available to the users should be posed to the DHCP pool. The first connectivity on site tests have been made with 1 Mbps / 512 kbps (downstream / upstream) satellite bandwidth and the router has been configured to provide 30 IPs from a private C-class subnet. The router used is a Linksys WRT54GL, which can provide both four (4) 100 Mbps Ethernet 802.3 ports and wireless access of up to 54 Mbps (or 11 Mbps depending on the client’s supported wireless protocol) inside the building, while the access point is a Cisco Aironet 1240 series with a 5.2dBi omni directional antenna.
The DVB-RCS terminal provided by Hellas-Sat is an EMS 3020.The measurements held showed a very good coverage to the greater part of the village and up to 2-km clear line of sight (opposite to the School building). The wireless network covers points of interest such as the village’s central square (photo 7), the Cultural Center and local hostels. The transmission power levels conform to the limits posed by the European legislation. The implemented architecture allows its wireless and wired users not only to make use of broadband internet services but also to interact with each other through data sharing, voice over IP, audio and video streaming, gaming etc. These services fulfill the aims of the “Rural Wings” project and show the importance of such initiatives.
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