Community networks are decentralized communication networks, built and operated by citizens for citizens. Most of these networks originated for enabling Internet access for under-provisioned areas. With the consolidation of cloud technology, there is now also the potential to extend the community networks towards the application level, and deploy within these networks cloud-based applications. In this paper we conduct an experimental deployment of a set of applications on cloud-based infrastructures within community networks. The aim of this study is to understand better the feasibility of running cloud-based applications in the challenging environment of these networks. For our study, we use several nodes inside of two community networks to host our applications and carry out experiments under realistic conditions. The results we obtain with deployments of ownCloud, Tahoe-LAFS and BitTorrent, are a correct functioning of the applications and a promising user experience. Our results could encourage users to contribute and participate in larger scale trials of clouds in community networks, and application developers to envision innovative services based on collective infrastructures.

Peer Reviewed