1.4  The Proposed System

An offline mail server in the rural area local area network (LAN) is where rural users can read, send and receive email locally in the LAN. Meanwhile the external email content to be sent online will be stored temporarily until it is transferred to infomediary device. The database synchronization system in the offline server computer will transfer and receive new database from the infomediary device as shown in Figure 1.2. Infomediary device working as a temporary storage and can be accessible via Wi-Fi or wireless local area network (WLAN). Then the database synchronization system in the online server computer will transfer and receive new email data from this infomediary device. Online mail server has all the features as offline mail server where the user in that area can use the offline email system locally through LAN. Online mail server is connected to the internet. This offline email system can be access from the internet through the online mail server. The external email content to be sent offline will be stored temporarily until it is being transferred to infomediary device and then to the offline mail server at rural area.

Figure 1.2: Offline email system components

Store and forward process between mail server and infomediary device provide the ability of connection between offline email system and online email system. This will enable the email content to flow through the offline environment to the internet environment and vice versa. It is critical to develop a suitable subsystem that can fulfill the need of this offline email system because there is a challenge in the email database synchronization. This synchronization system should have the ability to synchronize the database between the offline mail server and the infomediary device. It is also responsible to synchronize the database in the online mail server and database in the infomediary device. Infomediary device is a temporary storage for the email database operates wirelessly to collect the email data between the offline environment and the online environment. It should be portable, secured and has a long life battery. There are two different environments for this offline email system which is offline and online. Both sides consist of mail server and mail client for their respective environment. At the online side, the online mail system is connected to the internet using a personal home server. This mail server is running on Streamyx dynamic IP conjunction with Uniform Server. The Uniform Server is a Windows Apache, MySQL and PHP, Perl or Python (WAMP) package that allows the user to run a server on any Microsoft Windows Operating System based computer.