Palpung Sherabling Institute | Kangra Valley Network
Summary
The Palpung Sherabling Institute is a Tibetan monastery located near the Baijnath Temple, housing several hundred monks. This somewhat remote, peaceful remote place has its slight connectivity downsides – no reliable internet links. The monastery approached AirJaldi, requesting a connection that would allow them access to the internet. We built a specialised campus networks for the monastery that connects their offices, libraries, media centers as well as several private users. A high-speed link for live video transmission has been added in early 2011.
Problem:
The Sherabling monastery’s location made broadband access (and earlier proper telephone service) a challange. The monastery was keen on improving its connectivity, and considered the usual options – VSAT, commercial ISPs. However, they found that these were expensive and not reliable. Hence the situation fit nicely with AirJaldi’s know-how and capability.
Approach:
This installation posed a special challenge for the team because the location of the monastery fell behind a mountain, with no direct Line of Sight from any of our Dharamsala-area relays. In order to circumvent that, we set up a relay near Ashapuri Mata Mandir, on a high mountain about half way between Dharmsala and the monestary , which helped us to overcome the hill ranges by using other hills. This first hop of this wireless link, one of our longest, is about 45km. long.
The Sherabling monastery covers a large area, spanning two hills. As it is a large site, it was not possible to reliably connect all computers by cable. So we set up a campus network, which connected all offices, media rooms and users wirelessly. The monastery now has a stable link capable of delivering around 18 mbps. The connection is solar-powered and self-sustainable, eliminating most maintenance issues. In February 2011, we increased the bandwidth to enable live video transmission of religious teachings and ceremonies from the monastery to audiences worldwide.
Result:
AirJaldi’s wireless network has allowed the monks of Sherabling monastery to connect with the world, and for its followers to be connected to it on a real-time basis. The internet is presently serving the triple needs of communication, maintenance of online presence promoting the monastery and its traditions, and live dissemination of teachings and work.
