The Cuban Internet Crisis

Re:The Cuban Internet Crisis by gmisra on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @04:56PM (#9688486)

Interestingly, Cuba has developed an alternative network for the distribution of many types of digital content: people with access to content download it and distribute it using portable hard drives and usb sticks. A friend of mine recently visited Cuba, and according to him, these "paquete shops" are everywhere. There are standard bundles of content (tv shows, movies, viral videos, news, music, etc), and a la carte service. According to him, the content is consistently up-to-date (the latest Game of Thrones episode is available within 2-3 days). The shops themselves have developed brands, part of the value they provide is curatorial, as each bundle is different. Some of them have even branched out into adding their own bundled content, including neighborhood classifieds (craigslist, anyone?).

Information really only travels in one direction, so it is not even close to the real internet, but we could image an enterprising paquete shop bundling in some encryption software and forum software to enable two-way communication.

More here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/cuba-offline-in...

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Re:The Cuban Internet Crisis by gabrielhn on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @06:21PM (#9688889)

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

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Re:The Cuban Internet Crisis by x5n1 on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @05:40PM (#9688721)

Give it 5-10 years. They will have high speed internet cheaper than anywhere in the world.

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Re:The Cuban Internet Crisis by eric_h on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @05:49PM (#9688751)

Ah, the good ole sneaker net. It seems likely the bandwidth of that network will far outpace that of "real" internet in Cuba for quite some time.

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Re:The Cuban Internet Crisis by bayesianhorse on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @06:48PM (#9689031)

Bandwith, yes. "Latency", not so much. We talk about a latency of milliseconds being important for e-commerce, online trading, API Access, but a sneakernet has a latency of at the very least days for the most "interesting" stuff, and months for other content.

So yes, the sneakernet can be used to distribute education materials, movies, texts and the like, but the real benefits of the internet only develop with low latency and multidirectional communication.

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Re:The Cuban Internet Crisis by digi_owl on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @06:53PM (#9689057)

Yep, my first thought went to my Amiga days of passing floppies around. Then later DOS and early Win9x that was first floppies and then CDR based. Then came LAN parties...

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