What hardware/frequencies/technology are you using for these links?
Repurposed commercial microwave gear?
-cjp
Nope, mostly HF (under 30mhz) gear at 300baud. Yes, you read that right.
I've seen a couple shorter hops of fractional T1 on 900mhz or 9600baud AX.25
on 144mhz, but there just aren't enough links to use line of site
frequencies.
Push mad bits,
-Jack Carrozzo
You are running IP on this? And I though 1200 bauds half duplex was slow.
Me personally? No, but I have used it. IP over 9600baud serial actually
isn't that bad for IRC when you're in the middle of the woods and all.
You want slow... read about winlink2000, the email/messaging system for hams
and emergency response. It's PSK on HF, meant to be reliable but if you get
more than 400bps you are doing GREAT! It's so slow that you can run the
software on two laptops using the sound cards, and they'll talk across the
room via speakers and mics no problem. It sounds kinda like robots rapping.
-Jack Carrozzo
Used to run IP over AX.25 using KA9Q JNOS back in the day. HF at 300
baud simplex / half-duplex and VHF 144 Mhz at 1200 with similar
characteristics. I bought some 9600 baud gear at one point but never
got it all put together before moving on to the regular internet and
(somewhat unfortunately) not really looking back. I remember
transferring some uuencoded gifs via smtp... a couple of days later,
if you were lucky, it would complete. I learned about how protocols
communicate watching packet traces in KA9Q JNOS when I was about 14
years old. It was really easy when there were guaranteed to be
multiple seconds between packets. I remember being 14 and feeling
pretty suave when I figured out how to telnet into an SMTP server to
send mail... of course that is old hat but still good common
troubleshooting these days!
de KB7LIG
--Carl
And I just want to point out that a full /8 (worth $188,911,452.16 at the benchmark rate as set by Microsoft/NNI) is dedicated to AMPR... 
When I was at IANA, we (where by "we" I mean Leo Vegoda :-)) looked at trying to reclaim this /8 around the same time we were recovering the /8 dedicated to X.25. The decentralized nature of administration of 44/8 made this somewhat intractable. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the future address markets.
Regards,
-drc
The decentralized nature of administration of 44/8 made this somewhat
intractable. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the future
address markets.
I reckon it'd be about as hard to get back 44/8 as 11/8, but with more
neckbeards. Anytime the fcc tries to reclaim frequencies all these guys come
out of the wood work with the magic phrase 'emergency communications' and
some congressmen get on their side about it.
It will be amusing to see, yes.
-Jack Carrozzo
<out of the woodwork>
from our cold dead hands.
</out of the woodwork>
kd8mzn
Yeah, so... the thing is there really are benefits to ham radio for
the community. I 100% believe in that. And yes, there are a lot of
neck beards but, honestly, look at some pictures from a NANOG meeting!
I have been massively inactive in Amateur Radio for some time. I miss
it. However I am acutely aware of how ham plays a very valuable,
amazing role in emergency situations. Even on a small scale, during
the last Seattle snow (which was pretty much a joke by the standards
of any place that gets real snow) I know that Seattle ACS was
coordinating emergency transportation for dialysis patients that could
not find transportation, things like that. Things that no
right-minded taxpayer wants to pay for the gov to operate on a
continous basis but things that are really absolutely necessary! In
the California earthquakes, ham has often been the only remaining
method of emergency communications.
Now, did 44/8 help in any of that? I honestly don't know. Does
ampr.org really need a /8? That is probably a very reasonable
question. Honestly I think there are other protocol stacks that
perform much better for digital transmission than IP on ham radio
anyway. Is it being managed tightly? I'd say not in some ways... I
am very glad to see this still exists from a personal perspective but
I haven't used IP over ham in over 15 years and, well:
dhcp182:~ carlr$ dig kb7lig.ampr.org
; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> kb7lig.ampr.org
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 45474
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;kb7lig.ampr.org. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
kb7lig.ampr.org. 14400 IN A 44.24.100.9
;; Query time: 217 msec
;; SERVER: 10.1.0.248#53(10.1.0.248)
;; WHEN: Thu May 26 17:27:07 2011
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 49
But so here is a "system" that is capable of playing a key role in
improving many peoples' lives (if actually used), helping in
emergencies, assisting during armageddon (?), etc. There are an awful
lot of netblocks that are used for much less valid things (IMHO)...
but since those make money, everyone endorses it and considers it
"proper".
I fully support ham radio retaining a decent block. Why don't we all
just speed along this IPv6 adoption thing here. If anyone deserved to
be allowed to avoid IPv6 is is ham radio. Just the increase in
address size might add another 12 hours to my image transfer!
But seriously. I am a networking professional but also a ham. I
could see looking into shrinking the .ampr.org 44/8 allocation, and if
the right decisions were made I could even support it. But really I
would vote for improved IPv6 adoption by everyone else as well as
better address utilization by commercial entities before trying to
strip this away from ham radio.
As for the note about spectrum: ham radio has TINY amounts of
spectrum. I haven't done the math in years / looked at the numbers
but I think a couple of local TV broadcasts take up more spectrum than
all of the worldwide ham bands combined. So seriously? Really?
All that said, IPv4 exhaustion is scary, including to me. I realize
the world won't come crashing down but the potential business
implications are pretty staggering.
Couple of notes: my opinion, not necessarily my employers. also, I
have not been involved in .ampr.org politicking since I was a
teen-ager so I prolly don't have all of the facts. Please convert any
flames to educational status.
Thanks,
--carl KB7LIG
<geez>
Since we are turning the clock back....I launched my first AX.25 node in 1985 when I was living at Ft. Belvoir, VA. It was part of the 144 MHz "eastlink" network that ran from Maine to Miami. Somewhere on a 5-1/2" floppy disk I have an ASCII map of that network.
You really could hear the packets in those days, even at 1200 Baud. I used to use a pair of 2M rigs plus a couple of TNCs to teach "datacom" as it was called then. Lots of fun!
</geez>
73 de KJ4WA
I still have my TNC here on the shelf... not much use for pushing bits, but
still handy to decode SCADA on 900mhz
-Jack Carrozzo
I haven't read the entire thread, but since everyone with a call sign is
checking in...
There are some similarities between bands and ipv4 exhaustion, sure... One
major difference is that those using ipv4 have the option of using ipv6,
where if ham bands are taken they're just gone.
-73
af6ss
Out of curiosity, is there an IPv6 stack for ham devices?
Regards,
-drc
> There are some similarities between bands and ipv4 exhaustion, sure...
One
> major difference is that those using ipv4 have the option of using ipv6,
Out of curiosity, is there an IPv6 stack for ham devices?
Regards,
-drc
Well there's a loaded question.
So a traditional ham device is a radio, so any protocol you want to run on
top of a radio wave is possible. There are some radios that do have ways to
transfer data, like slow scan and psk31, but that's usually done by a device
connected to the radio.
I won't say that there aren't "ham devices" with an IP stack built in, but I
think we're talking about different layers here.
-wil
> Out of curiosity, is there an IPv6 stack for ham devices?
Well there's a loaded question.
...
I won't say that there aren't "ham devices" with an IP stack built in, but I think we're talking about different layers here.
Sorry, poorly worded. What I was wondering is there is an equivalent of KA9Q for IPv6. I believe one of the comments we got back when we were trying to reclaim 44/8 was that folks couldn't migrate to IPv6 because no software was available...
Regards,
-drc
Sorry, poorly worded. What I was wondering is there is an equivalent of KA9Q for IPv6. I believe one of the comments we got back when we were trying to reclaim 44/8 was that folks couldn't migrate to IPv6 because no software was available...
We've come a little way since NOS. Linux has native AX25, and it's pretty simple to write a KISS adapter for any version of UNIX with a tun driver.
.. except at such low bit rates, the extra IPv6 header size is not insignificant?
Adrian
Yeah, so... the thing is there really are benefits to ham radio for
the community. I 100% believe in that. And yes, there are a lot of
neck beards but, honestly, look at some pictures from a NANOG meeting!
Indeed, there is a club call sign for NANOG. 
I have it on good authority that N4NOG is registered as follows:
N4NOG
North American Network Operators' Group ARC
C/o Robert Seastrom, PO BOX 9303
McLean, VA 22102
USA
Source: http://www.qrz.com
But so here is a "system" that is capable of playing a key role in
improving many peoples' lives (if actually used), helping in
emergencies, assisting during armageddon (?), etc. There are an awful
lot of netblocks that are used for much less valid things (IMHO)...
but since those make money, everyone endorses it and considers it
"proper".
Given this belief you may want to come stand up for it on the ARIN
public policy mailing list where there is currently a policy being
discussed that attempts to remove needs basis from the criteria
to receive an IPv4 netblock through the directed transfer process.
Owen
Well, I wrote a lot of the original IPv6 stuff (back when it was PIPE -> SIP ->
SIPP) for KA9Q, have the source around here somewhere....
But now I'd just use Linux. Alan Cox ported the KA9Q AX25 code long ago.
Since everybody and his brother is coming out of the woodwork -- sadly, I've
not done any AX25 since my grandfather Marvin Allen Maten (W8TQP) died; that
was one of the things we did together. Although he was a ham since circa 1916,
he was always wanting to try the latest! His QSL contacts went back so far, he
knew Hugo Gernsback and his brother (who actually ran the electronics store).
David Conrad writes:
Sorry, poorly worded. What I was wondering is there is an equivalent
of KA9Q for IPv6.
But KA9Q is already certified for IPv6!
http://ipv6.he.net/certification/scoresheet.php?pass_name=ka9q
(found on http://www.ka9q.net/)
SCNR.