Wizzy Digital Courier

Wizzy Digital Courier is a project to distribute useful data to places with no Internet connection. Primarily for e-mail, it also carries web content (stored locally in a web cache). From an early description of the project ¹:

Data normally carried by the dial up telephone link is instead physically carried by a mobile computer between the end user's location and a high bandwidth data drop to the Internet.

Delivery mechanisms are by overnight dialup, taking advantage of discount calling rates outside business hours, or USB memory stick. The USB stick uses the UUCP protocol, carrying information to and from a better-connected location - perhaps a school or local business, which acts as the dropoff for Email, and fetches web content by proxy. The email and web content is re-packaged as a UUCP transaction, and ferried back on the USB stick.

The project site offers a bootable CD image that lets users install Wizzy Digital Courier onto a computer, erasing what is already on the computer and installing a new operating system (a modification of CentOS Linux, itself a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) along with all of the Wizzy content.

History

The project was started in early 2003 by Andy Rabagliati to bring low cost Internet access to schools in South Africa, to work on old computers, with no license fees for any software.^[1] Many installations are at Shuttleworth Foundation thin client labs.

See also

• Sneakernet, which refers to the practice of a person wearing sneakers carrying a floppy disk or other portable media containing the data. The term takkie net was used in South Africa, where "Takkie" means sneaker in South African English.^[2] Bolivia has used the term abarka net in a similar sense, an abarka being a kind of footwear made from old tires.
• Interplanetary Internet - could implement Wizzy Digital Courier practices for internet access over a link that is interrupted for long periods of time

References

External links

• Official website
• Wizzy Digital Courier