Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh

WHY Chanderi?

Nestled in the Vindhyachal range and situated in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, the town of Chanderi is composed of a labyrinth of lanes full of archaeological remains that bear testimony to its long and eventful past. Chanderi can best be described as a rural town with an urban consciousness. Weaving is the source of livelihood for more than 60% of its population, while the rest are engaged in agriculture, biri making, stone quarring and tertiary occupations.Chanderi was one of the regions selected for the establishment of a wireless community because DEF has already set up a well established infrastructure to cater a centre with multi-faceted activities like ICT Training Centre, Textile Designing & Apparel Designing Centre, Weaving Centre for the Self help Groups to come to the centre and use the centre resources and facilities to engage themselves, train themselves and work towards self empowerment.

Chanderi Weavers Information Resource Centre of DEF serves more than 500 families out of more than 3000 families in Chanderi who have their own looms but do not have much means to get better economic value out of their weaving involvement.DEF centre has been operational for about 2 years and has been able to realise that to serve the entire 40,000 population of Chanderi including 13 Schools and more than 50 Panchayats, it is important to have provided them seamless net connectivity and through that among other activities also provide market reach.

At chanderi center, the implementation has happened successfully via Training of Trainers, Deployment of Wireless networks, Workshop.

CHANDERI W4C TRAINING

At the initial phase of the project, DEF selected 10 people from local region to provide the ToT programme and the training on basic understanding of the wireless networking.

CHANDERI WIRELESS MESH SET UP

At Chanderi, DEF decided to make CWIRC centre as the base, covering 20-30 kilometers of the region with a support of establishing one relay station and five point-to-point nodes.  Through this setup, DEF covered 30 schools of the region and more than 50 panchayats to provide the connectivity.

Wireless Training at Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh

Venue Selection:

The venue Chanderi was selected because, at Chanderi, DEF has a centre for the weavers and has well established infrastructure, a centre with multi-faceted activities like ICT Training Centre, Textile Designing & Apparel Designing Centre, Weaving Centre, Centre for various other activities for the Self help Groups to come to the centre and use the centre resources and facilities to engage themselves, train themselves and work towards self empowerment.

Chanderi Weavers Information Resource Centre of DEF serves more than 500 families out of more than 3000 families in Chanderi who have their own looms but do not have much means to get better economic value out of their weaving involvement. DEF centre has been operational for about 2 years and has been able to realise that to serve the entire 40,000 population of Chanderi including 13 Schools and more than 50 Panchayats, it is important to have provided them seamless net connectivity and trough that among other activities also provide market reach.

Training Dates: 11th October 2010 to 16th October 2010
Training Duration: One Week
Venue: Chanderi, District – Ashok Nagar, Madhya Pradesh, India
Trainees: 10 attended
Trainers: Bikram Acharya and Rajendra Poudel

Objective:

The objective of the training is to setup wireless mesh network within 15 kms at Chanderi with the support of one relay station and five none. And give the trainee a basic understanding of following thinks:

a) Fundament computer
b) Internetworking basic
c) Basic network topologies
d) The OSI Reference models
e) Ethernet networking
f) Ethernet cabling
g) TCP/IP Protocols
h) IP Addressing
i) Subnetting, Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSMs), and Troubleshooting TCP/IP
j) IP Routing
k) Wireless Standard
l) Radio Physics
m) Radio Link
n) Radio device configuration
o) User account creation
p) Security (WEP/WPA, MAC authentication)
q) Troubleshooting wireless network

Trainees:

1. Shahid Ahmad
2. Soumyakant Sahoo
3. Qaiser Jahan Qureshi
4. Jadumoni Boro
5. Rajender Singh Negi
6. Koyel Biswas
7. Vijay Roy
8. Azeem Khan
9. Yusuf Khan
10. Mudassir Ansari

Achievement:

The abilities and qualification of all the ToTs were mix. While many could be treated, after training as the good resource persons for wireless networking, at least 4 of them could be learnt as capable of becoming the trainers. At the end of the training all trainees were being able to do the following task at that current situation:

i. They could make all kind of cabling;
ii. They could do the link analysis between two nodes;
iii. Configure the radio (Mikrotik and Engenus) as Access Point, Client and as Mesh;
iv. Configure the Mikrotik Router as DHCP Server, Router, and Hotspot server;
v. They could create the user profile of different varieties and connect the client with Security
(WPA/WEP) and Mac authentication.

Limitations:

There were some limitations and challenges that the TOT could highlight:

i. Duration was too short for setup of wireless network and training, and was suggested that if ToT or Community Workshop are being done along with deployment then the duration should be 10-15 days;
ii. Too much time consume for find perfect location for node.
iii. And too much time consume in infrastructure setup like GI pipe installation, power backup setup and earth setup.

Feedback:

i. About venue: Excellent (100%) Average (0%) Poor (0%)
ii. About communication skills: Excellent (50%) Average (30%) Poor (20%)
iii. About personal qualities: Excellent (90%) Average (10%) Poor (0%)
iv. About content: Excellent (30%) Average (50%) Poor (20%)
v. About training method: Excellent (70%) Average (30%) Poor (0%)
vi. About duration of training: 100% feel, it should be at least for 10 days.