Internet Offline Solution for Rural /

Village Schools
Onno W. Purbo
[email protected]
IBI Darmajaya, Lampung, Indonesia – [email protected]
XECUREIT, Jakarta, Indonesia – [email protected]

Abstract
Close to the end of 2018, the Indonesian Ministry of Education seems to be interested to re-include
ICT class into school curriculum named Informatics class. Unfortunately, access to the Internet is
rare especially in rural / villages. In addition, there are not many initiatives in the world in
providing offline knowledge / content that can be accessed offline in rural and villages.

This work tries to enable rural communities to gain similar knowledge as those in cities. In this
work, we report on the possibility to provide inexpensive solutions for schools in village / rural
areas. Using the proposed solution, the students in village / rural areas will be able to get the
required information and knowledge by accessing the needed information on the Internet while
OFFLINE. The main contribution of this work is to provide

• Simple and low cost, less then US$100, Offline Internet server solution.
• The solution should be able to run without main electricity power, such as phone power
bank or solar cell.
• Copy the required online information on the Internet to local offline Internet server.
• The local server acts as Offline Internet to locally provide the required information and
knowledge at rural / village schools.

Thus, rural students will be able to gain the required information / knowledge needed for
educational purposes similar to Internet for schools in the cities. No Internet is required to access
the information / knowledge as it is locally available.

Consequences of ICT Class re-inclusion into School

Curriculum
Alhamdulillah, the Indonesian Ministry of Education seems to be thinking on re-inclusion of ICT as
part of the school curriculum. The consequences to be considered are

• The Indonesian need to prepare a good Informatics curriculum to build a good basic
foundation for elementary, middle and high school students in maximizing the use of ICT.
This includes topics on computational thinking, basic programming, robotics, 3D printing,
internet in addition to traditional office skill which in the past was prioritized.
• Prepare the required ICT teachers. There are currently around 240,000 schools in Indonesia,
it requires 500,000 new ICT teachers for the schools. Not to mention, the required
knowledge, such as computational thinking, robotics, 3D printing, are currently not thought
in most of the available educational faculties. It is becoming a huge task for the ministry of
education. Thus, the Indonesian needs setup a strategic policy to prepare the needed ICT
educational resources in a short time.
• Indonesia need to prepare infrastructure, laboratories, networks and these must be low cost,
have to consume very low electricity / energy as it is very difficult to get a good supply of
electricity power. And no less important is that it must be able to operate without having to
depend on the Internet. Thus, all materials, such as multimedia files video, audio, photos as
 well as web copy from the Internet sites, including wikipedia, to low cost local server. The
focus of this work is to contribute to this particular solution.

This work will not focus on the curriculum and educational policy, we will focus on providing the
infrastructure solution especially for village and rural schools. The price range that seems to
acceptable for rural / village needs is under US$100 per unit for a school. This is not include the
electrical installation, and power bank and assume smartphone may be used by students. These
financial and budget constraints require a deeper research by correlating the needed budget to
operate and maintain the system.

Internet Offline Solution for Rural and Village

Efforts to create an Internet offline access may not new, since the early development of the Internet,
some have been looking for solution on how to read Internet content while offline. Some may fullfil
by backing up emails, SMS, WA, to more complex activities such as downloading songs, movies,
files, PDFs, ebooks etc.

In this study, focus is given to educational content to be accessed offline. This effort is not very
new, there are a number of effort seem to be done in the world from the initiatives of several state
institutions and non-governmental organizations supported by various technologies that support
offline Internet. Thus, there are some activities on Internet offline initiatives but not much. Only a
handful of institutions / researches in the world are trying to provide solutions for areas with scarce
Internet access. Let's review the ongoing effort.

In terms of initiatives at the institutional level, both non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and
state institutions, some of these are,

• ICT Centre Uganda https://sites.google.com/site/ictcentreuganda/ - The ICT Center of

Uganda strives to create a system so that schools can access content on the Internet offline.
It seems that there are several similar effort, especially in Africa, to create / copy Internet
content so that it can be accessed offline [1].
• EduAir - EduAir (Formerly Kwiizi) from Cameroon is the concept name to offer a better
education via digital with or without the internet. Their work focuses on the design of
portable and open media libraries in the form of Boxes with solar energy giving access to
millions of educational content and offering an integrated communication system where
learners can make video calls within the local network deployed by the Box
http://www.eduairbox.com [2].
• Project Tawasol Tunisia - IEEE Sight in Tunisia developed Raspberry Pi operated devices
with hard disks that can be updated periodically with relevant content such as Wikipedia
pages, TED Talks and other educational content from the Internet. They are capable of
automatically updating content when connected to Wi-Fi or 3G networks [3].

No detailed information on the technology is described in the above information. Our work is using
RaspberryPi, seems to be similar with Project Tawasol Tunisia. We are unable to compare the
technology as no detail technology is described.

In terms of technology, there are quite a number of technologies developed that we can use to make
Internet content offline, a glimpse of these technologies include

• SolarSpell - SolarSpell - Library powered by Raspberry Pi, with Wifi access point
http://solarspell.org/ [4]
• Kiwix - is a free app that allows you to search and read Wikipedia without an Internet
connection. Available for Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS and Linux http://www.kiwix.org/
[5]

Our work make use of Kiwix to provide offline Wikipedia. Indeed, not many patents have been
produced to make the Internet Offline technology, some of which are,
 • Jay F. McLain, "Offline viewing of internet content with a mobile device", Assignee
Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC, US Grant US6493758B1, 1998 [6].
• Robert Shaver, William Clogston, "Systems and methods for providing a similar offline
viewing experience of online web-site content", Assignee University of Texas System, Oath
Inc, US Grant US8001471B2, 2006 [7].
• Robert Shaver, William Clogston, "Systems and methods for a single development tool of
unified online and offline content providing a similar viewing experience", Assignee Oath
Inc, US Grant US8015491B2, 2006 [8].

This work is not using any of the above patent. To synchronize content needed to provide offline
content, we use mainly the following commands,

• Rsync - Server apps to synchronize content.

• Wget - Server apps to partially copy or copy the entire web content.

Scripts for rsync and wget is developed to suite the require needs. To deliver the content to the user,
several services are installed in the server, such as

• Kiwix - apps to display an offline wiki.

• Apache, MySQL, PHP - Server apps to provide web services
• Samba - Server apps to provide file sharing, streaming videos.
• BIND – Server apps to spoof the hostname and redirect to the local virtual hosting.
• DHCP – to provide IP address to clients.

On the client side, the technology needed to access the Offline Internet is fairly similar to the tools
to access normal Internet. Thus, the users does not have to know that the actual content is located on
the local server in their school.

Offline Internet Framework

The Offline Internet Framework was developed for the first time and presented on youtube on the
OnnoCenter Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKuiRIQMZFE entitled "Offline
Internet Concept for Schools" dated 1/10/2018.
In general, there are three (3) functions / sections, namely, (1) content controller and accumulator,
(2) Operation of Offline Internet facilities at school, and (3) students / teachers who are accessing
the content using smartphones / computers.

The content collection section that may be centralized and performed by authoritative body, the
content collected in an SD / microsd card and ready to run. Content is then distributed to schools,
and installed on a local RaspberryPi server. Teachers and students can access through local network
facilities such as LAN and WiFi.

Preliminary Development
Initial development has been self-financially started by the author. Moreover, the results are freely
released online and, thus, the Indonesian may immediately received the benefit from the technology.

In general, there are three (3) functions of Internet Offline System that must be considered, and
developed, namely.

1. Content collector / controller / accumulator, as well as distributor to schools.

2. Offline Internet infrastructure at schools
3. Users mostly students / teachers who access the content via smartphones / computers.

In content collector / controller / accumulator , some of the tasks are as follows

• Determine which content / web need to retrieved based on the school's curriculum.
• Content will be limited to the size of microsd. The average affordable microsd has around 8-
16 Gbyte space, which be used for a lot of text content. But not much lots of video content.
• Content should be adjusted to the school's curriculum. This is a bit difficult as content for
grade 1 will definitely be different from other classes. Hence, more research is needed to do
in depth content analysis.
• Content should be adjusted to the teaching methods. As far as I know, there is currently no
standard on the teaching materials / methods on using online materials. Not many education
faculties provide practical method to maximize online teaching material in the learning
process. Thus, teacher’s creativity is required to maximize the benefits of existing content.
• Technologically, the process of copying material to make it available offline is relatively
simple, even the Wikipedia community has provided kiwix for these purposes.

In the operation of Internet Offline facilities at schools, some of the tasks are as follows
• This work is focused on preparing the Offline Internet server using embedded system, such
as raspberrypi or orangepi.
• The technical aspects are written in more detailed in the wiki
http://onnocenter.or.id/wiki/index.php/Internet_offline [9]
• In general, Raspberrypi Server is prepared to act as a stand alone server with Web Server
facilities, DHCP Server, File Sharing Server, DNS Server so that it can function as an
Offline Internet server.
• The BIND DNS Server is set according to the machine domain that is copied to redirect
traffic not to the Internet but to the local server.
• Apache Web Server is set to be a virtual hosting server that is capable of receiving HTTP
and HTTPS traffic.
• Kiwix is used to display copy of Indonesian wikipedia and wikitionary copies. Users may
access it via the Web.

Students / teachers accessing the content via smartphone / computer may have several notes, such
as,
• Smartphones, tablets, laptops may be used to access available teaching materials. We only
need to provide additional WiFi Access Points and LAN cables. A single WiFi Access Point
 will only effective for a maximum of ten (10) simultaneous devices. To be able to be
simultaneously accessed by the whole school, many WiFi access points with many channels
that are different from each other (orthogonal channel) are needed
• The biggest problem is the electricity power to keep smartphones, tablets and laptops
running for a long period of time.

Summary
The main contribution of the paper is in proposing low cost Offline Internet solution for rural and
village schools using local server at the school. The required Internet content is copied to
Raspberrypi based local server, and, thus, may be view offline by the students. The solution to
overcome the knowledge scarcity in rural and villages areas due to lack of Internet access.

Open Source technology is used and detailed how to has been posted on the web and wiki [9]. The
major technical issue is in providing electric power to many devices in the school for a long period
of time. Alternative electric resources such as solar cells that are integrated with the power bank
may be of interest.

The most difficult and the time consuming work is in preparing the teaching materials to be copied
to the offline Internet server. From the hardware side, we will face the limitation of microsd storage
size. It thus limits the scenario and methods in providing the educational material to the students.
With very limited space in the microsd, we need to focus on what material need to be copied to
microsd so that it is sufficient for teaching processes. From the content side, we need to develop
method to do automatic educational content collection from the Internet.

Another advantage of Internet Offline Solution for schools is that teacher no longer have to worry
about pornographic, in appropriate contents, cyberbullying, spam, hoax and many unproductive
content from the Internet. Thus, the schools can be focused on positive content for teaching only.

This research is still in the early stage. It is our hope to be able to produce a practical solution for
schools in rural / village areas. Further work, especially in preparing content in sync with the
teaching method is needed.

Referensi
1. An ICT Centre for the people of Kisozi. (n.d.). Retrieved 2018, October 20, from
https://sites.google.com/site/ictcentreuganda/
2. EduAir. (n.d.). Retrieved 2018, October 20, from http://www.eduairbox.com/
3. Project Tawasol - Connecting Primary Schools to Create an Internet - Empowered Next
Generation in Tunisia. (n.d.). Retrieved 2018, October 20, from http://1worldconnected.org/
wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Project-Tawasol-Tunisia.pdf
4. SolarSPELL is a Solar Powered Educational Learning Library. (n.d.). Retrieved 2018,
October 20, from http://solarspell.org/
5. Kiwix: Read Wikipedia Offline. (n.d.). Retrieved 2018, October 20, from
http://www.kiwix.org/
6. Jay F. McLain, "Offline viewing of internet content with a mobile device", Assignee
Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC, US Grant US6493758B1, 1998.
7. Robert Shaver, William Clogston, "Systems and methods for providing a similar offline
viewing experience of online web-site content", Assignee University of Texas System, Oath
Inc, US Grant US8001471B2, 2006.
8. Robert Shaver, William Clogston, "Systems and methods for a single development tool of
unified online and offline content providing a similar viewing experience", Assignee Oath
Inc, US Grant US8015491B2, 2006.
9. Internet Offline Experimental Notes. (n.d.). Retrieved 2018, October 20, from
http://onnocenter.or.id/wiki/index.php/Internet_offline
Onno W. Purbo holds a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from University of Waterloo, Canada, is a
copy left, educator and ICT evangelist. He has published 50+ books, including free ICT ebook for
high school in 2008. Some of his latest books entitled, "Perjuangan Menyebarkan Internet"
(Struggle in Deploying Internet), 2016, "Buku Pegangan Internet untuk Desa" (Internet Handbook
for Villages), 2016, and "Internet-TCP/IP: Konsep Dan Implementasi" (Internet TCP/IP: Concept
and Implementation), 2018,in Indonesian. He led the first Internet connection at Institute of
Technology in Bandung, around 1993-2000, and use it to build the first education network. He
liberates WiFi frequency, and introduces neighborhood network, wajanbolic antenna and OpenBTS
cellular network. He led the first community telephony network over Internet, VoIP Merdeka, later
known as SIP based VoIP rakyat and uses +62520 and +62521 area code. He currently actives in
introducing e-learning, run the largest free e-learning servers http://lms.onnocenter.or.id/moodle/
with 30,000+ participants.