San Diego Native American Communities Continue Transition from HPWREN to Tribal Digital Village Network

The Southern California Tribal Chairmen's Association (SCTCA) recently completed additional milestones in their efforts to transition HPWREN to their Tribal Digital Village Network (TDVNet), which continues its expansion to reach all 18 San Diego County reservations.

Earlier this month, the tribes added another antenna on a Palomar Mountain relay station. This relay, which is often referred to as Cluster 1, connects three Native American tribes to broadband telecommunications - allowing the tribal communities to have the same access to high-speed Internet as their urban counterparts.

Via splitter, the new TDVNet Cluster 1 antenna points toward Red Mountain, which links to Mount Soledad and finally on to the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UCSD. Prior to the new antenna, Cluster 1 was only connected by a rather long 24-mile connection to Mount Woodson. While the TDVNet team provided all of the equipment and labor for the new installation, the HPWREN team helped with network design and instruction for the TDVNet network engineers.

The La Jolla tribe's connection is also being re-engineered to connect via the closer Cluster 1. This is expected to become fully operational over the next few weeks. In preparation, a prototype relay was deployed at the new TDVNet office in Pala.

The team is also working on several additional relays for a Cluster 2 area, which will provide connectivity to the Los Coyotes, Mesa Grande, and Santa Ysabel tribes. These three tribes are also located in rural San Diego county and will utilize the connectivity at their learning centers as do the Pala, La Jolla, Rincon, and San Pasqual tribes.

"It is really great being able to understand the technology and work with it," says Michael Peralta, TDVNet network designer and Rincon tribal member. "I sure am ready to take the next steps for our tribes."

Another major accomplishment being completed is the transition of equipment ownership from HPWREN to TDVNet. "This technology transfer is being conducted by in-kind replacements of the equipment back to HPWREN, and assuming TDVnet ownership of what had been deployed earlier," says HPWREN PI Hans-Werner Braun. "This transfer of equipment ownership also includes educating TDVNet staff with the expertise that they need to design, build, configure, and operate a high performance wireless data network."

"We are very pleased with this technology transfer, which is possible so quickly due to the dedication and commitment by the TDVNet staff and the financial resources provided by the Hewlett-Packard grant to the Southern California Tribal Chairman's Association."

"HP is very pleased with the progress made by the TDV team in the last few months," adds Sukumar Srinivas, the Hewlett-Packard Executive responsible for the TDVnet grant to the SCTCA. "The level of competence in dealing with the HPWREN technology and the enthusiasm for creating their own infrastructure is very encouraging from the viewpoint of sustainability of this project beyond the HP grant."

Additional photographs regarding TDVNet's Cluster 1 are available at https://cdn.hpwren.ucsd.edu/images/sites.html#HP.

Additional information about the TDVNet can be found at https://www.hpwren.ucsd.edu/news/011030.html and https://www.hpwren.ucsd.edu/news/010913.html.

-KMB