Fogibox

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Fogibox

Hong Kong, Hong Kong S.A.R., China
Year Founded:
2011
Organization type: 
nonprofit/ngo/citizen sector
Project Stage:
Start-Up
Budget: 
$1 million - $5 million
Website:
http://fogibox.com
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Project Summary
Elevator Pitch

Concise Summary: Help us pitch this solution! Provide an explanation within 3-4 short sentences.

A content centric network is an separates data from a location. No longer does a person need to go to a particular URL to get content. All they need to do is search for the data by name and the system will go and find the data for you wherever it might be. Be it from mobile phone next to you.

WHAT IF - Inspiration: Write one sentence that describes a way that your project dares to ask, "WHAT IF?"

What if monoploy telecoms companies couldn't extort money out of the poor? What if people had a alternative cheaper means to move data around? W
About Project

Problem: What problem is this project trying to address?

Today's internet is not designed for exabytes of information. A single popular server is swamped by the amount of requests for data. This also leads to the problem that the extremities of the internet such as in 3rd world countries have very poor access to the internet. Today's system banks on high speed fiber optics, many countries cannot afford this.

Solution: What is the proposed solution? Please be specific!

The solution is to set data free, to build caching into the networking protocol. So that a person in Africa doesn't need to send a request all the way to the states over dodgy network connectivity. The data spreads out over the network and performance improves the more popular the data is. This means that data can make its way to 3rd world countries and be cached locally so that other people can have ready access to it. This paradigm shift means that there is no binary status of being connected to the internet or not. Its is one large system of strong eventual consistency. The root cause of this problem is data needs to be disconnected from location.
Impact: How does it Work

Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.

Desmond in South Africa, needs to get data from one village to another. There is no connectivity between the two villages. Though many people make the walk everyday. Desmond asks someone going to that village to bring a USB stick to his friend. The friend receives it and plugs it into his device. Immediately content starts to sync between the USB stick and device. Updates from farming related content, the latest market prices for produce, latest information gets synched onto the USB device. The friend then unplugs the USB memory stick and hands it back to the transporter, who then walks back to first village and hands the USB stick to the stick's owner, whom then plugs up and syncs the latest content. Allow better decisions to be made.

Impact: What is the impact of the work to date? Also describe the projected future impact for the coming years.

This concept has only recently hit the masses, spear headed by Van Jacobson of Parc. This concept is called a content centric network. It is set to become the new internet. We aim to bring it into the 3rd world countries.
Sustainability

Financial Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure financial sustainability?

All software and hardware will be released as GPL3 Open Source. For general public usage. Though we aim to sell neat hardware devices over the internet via mail order.

Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?

Parc, a xerox company, they are doing more academic iterations on the design. It is a proof of concept that is working. Cisco is looking at it with interest, having already invested millions. We aim to redo the technology so that it is open source and can operate efficiently in 3rd world countries.
Team

Founding Story

I wanted to move physical objects from one part of the world to another without paying a transportation company to do it for me. One thing lead to the next and I'm working on deploying a content centric network to the world.