A Flexible Router with Tangible Network Interfaces for Sharing a Last Mile

Abstract

After the big earthquake in 2011 in Japan, the disaster survivors lost the means to acquire and convey information in the stricken area. In this paper, we propose a means to share seamless access to the Internet immediately among survivors using surviving access lines including ground infrastructures and satellite communications even if disaster exceeds assumption. We introduce the notion of TNI (Tangible Network Interface) that can easily configure small handy router named Flexible Router on site without configuring the settings of router from external console device. We also introduce Integrated Wireless Authentication System to share Internet access line among disaster survivors. We implemented Flexible Router and its TNIs and demonstrate its performance.