Help Build the Wireless Emergency Network (WEN) in San Jose

[acraiga]

The San Jose Office of Emergency Services (via sjraces.org) is building the WEN (Wireless Emergency Network). A point-to-point high-speed data network that is independent of external Internet connections, power grid connections, and terrestrial wires that connects all the stakeholders in the community together. All the various city Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) in the South Bay, VTA, Santa Clara County Water District, Santa Clara County EOC, San Jose Water Company EOC, PG&E, Moffett Field EOC, all local hospitals, the Red Cross, local NGO's, even the major Silicon Valley employers. The basic infrastructure is being built now (OSI layers 1 through 4) and we need help defining what OSI layers 5-7 will look like; i.e. what tools will we use to communicate. Certainly web-based, with WiFi hotspots, video distribution systems, and enabling mobile phones. But what about a Wiki? A set of Wordpress blogs? A GIS shared distributed map? A set of IRC rooms?

[acraiga]

We are looking for a number of people to help build the network services on this network. For example we need an Asterisk VoIP phone switch expert to configure and set up multiple redundant and resilient servers at multiple locations, including designing a dial plan with the ability to add external trunks to the outside world. Another need is someone with GIS experience to set up a Tile generation server that will build map tiles for Openstreetmaps data. We also need IT help in installing redundant LDAP servers, VPN gateway servers, CGI-Perl experts to build message passing/printing web pages, Nagios experts to set up Network monitoring servers, and Java-script hackers to build web forms for data entry. Help with virtualization of servers with failover would also be of great help. We also need help setting up IP camera video distribution servers. I will be adding documentation of the network in the next few days (like a map, etc).

[evankroske]

If you break this project idea into many smaller, more detailed project ideas, you're more likely to find volunteers.

[acraiga]

We need an Asterisk VoIP Phone System Expert. We need an expert to configure our Asterisk VoIP phone system to be distributed, redundant, and to develop a strategy to make this system easily expandable in a crisis. As a secondary goal, we need it to connect to the external phone network.

[acraiga]

Here is a map of our current wireless network. The Green lines are operational, the blue line are planned, yellow lines are incomplete links (a signal goes one way but nothing comes back yet).

[adematb]

Hi @acraiga,

I should be able to help on the IP-Network side, Server, slightly on VoIP but not on the design-side...etc I could help on IP Wireless bridge installations and so on as well.

Let me know if you have anything pending that I can help with.

[gleason86]

Hi, I am a systems admin with experience in LDAP, database and some networking experience. Let me know how I can help!

[jenniferdai]

Hi @acraiga I have experience in databases + frontend development. Let me know if I can contribute!