Applying for a LOTW cert is a rather painful and intrusive process outside of the USA.
Josh
-------- Original message --------
From: Ruben ON3RVH <on3rvh(a)on3rvh.be>
Date: 15/09/2017 20:01 (GMT+10:00)
To: AMPRNet working group <44net(a)hamradio.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: [44net] USENET news on AMPRNet
Why not use LOTW for authentication?
It's been done before and if you are LOTW verified it means that you are a radio amateur
73,
Ruben - ON3RVH
-----Original Message-----
From: 44Net [mailto:44net-bounces+on3rvh=on3rvh.be@hamradio.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Rob Janssen
Sent: vrijdag 15 september 2017 11:43
To: 44net(a)hamradio.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: [44net] USENET news on AMPRNet
> Don't solve a problem that doesn't exist.
> Usenet access is readily and economically available. There are enough
> providers that there are sites that review which is best.
> Google for 'usenet providers' and see for yourself.
The idea of course (at least I think) wasn't to provide generic usenet access on AMPRNet. Instead, it would be used for closed access discussion like this mailing list. Only a couple of hamradio related groups.
Of course this immediately shows the practical problem: the authentication of valid users. You would need to maintain a table of users similar to what the mailing list now has, and when you want a couple of news servers around the world, you would want this access information to be somehow synchronized between them.
Additionally, you may want some groups accessible to "any radio amateur".
But then you run into the problem that has been encountered so often: how to authenticate a radio amateur without maintaining yet another user list where new applicants have to be validated by people who would prefer to do more valued work.
Rob
_________________________________________
44Net mailing list
44Net(a)hamradio.ucsd.edu
http://hamradio.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/44net
_________________________________________
44Net mailing list
44Net(a)hamradio.ucsd.edu
http://hamradio.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/44net
> Don't solve a problem that doesn't exist.
> Usenet access is readily and economically available. There are
> enough providers that there are sites that review which is best.
> Google for 'usenet providers' and see for yourself.
The idea of course (at least I think) wasn't to provide generic usenet access
on AMPRNet. Instead, it would be used for closed access discussion like this
mailing list. Only a couple of hamradio related groups.
Of course this immediately shows the practical problem: the authentication of
valid users. You would need to maintain a table of users similar to what the
mailing list now has, and when you want a couple of news servers around the
world, you would want this access information to be somehow synchronized between
them.
Additionally, you may want some groups accessible to "any radio amateur".
But then you run into the problem that has been encountered so often: how to
authenticate a radio amateur without maintaining yet another user list where
new applicants have to be validated by people who would prefer to do more
valued work.
Rob
> If you're one of the very few people who have ever taken advantage of
> the ability to read USENET news via AMPRNet and the news.ucsd.edu server,
> you should be aware that that server is failing from old age and will be
> taken out of service soon. We don't plan to replace it; Usenet itself
> is fading away. I co-authored the NNTP protocol some 31 years ago;
> that's a pretty good run for any internet standard.
I wasn't aware that there was any special service from news.ucsd.edu towards
AMPRNet... does it carry any special groups other than rec.radio.amateur.*?
Fortunately my ISP still maintains USENET servers, two separate clusters
even, one for what we used to use for news and another one dedicated to
moving large blobs of gibberish :-)
Indeed I see your name above RFC977! Great!
I once maintained a CNEWS server for a company, which used a UUCP batch
feed over a 9600 baud phone modem. The group list had to be trimmed all the
time so it would not get behind so much it would never catch up, and the
200MB spool had to be carefully watched as well. Those were the days...
Greetings, friends, allow me comment on this topic and after having seen
all the comments, I would like to express too.
Many of us who are already time in the Amprnet understand the rules to be
followed by our great friend Brian Kantor as proyect lider who for many
years now does much to keep the Amprnet 44 together with many contributions
from many other colleagues. Gentlemen, the world has advanced a few years
since IRC, Usenet, etc, we are in time to think that social platforms are
now important or more than before, more powerful than the conventional ways
of communication, and I think, that we should use for Amprnet chat in
privately (private group).
If the information is more confidential for any reason the social networks
are not used, and exits now other routes that are used now. But Facebook,
for example, would serve to us as a more "real" link between all the
Coordinators and people with whom we can share general information of this
activity of this tecnical HOBBY and sure may to grow in friends and should
not be confused with our professional activities in this environment.
In my case I would like to have contact via Facebook with Brian or any
Regional Amprnet Coordinators and have a more relaxed arena to be able to
speak general topics of our Hobby.
73 de Gabriel YV5KXE.
Venezuela Amprnet Coordinator
----------------------------------------------------
1. Re: New Facebook Group (Richard Chycoski)
*************************************
> Bandwidth, no data, but it's likely low. Email is a low-bandwidth
> application. There are about 700 subscribers.
> The entire Mailman installation, including the contents of the archive,
> is small, about 200 MB. Most of that is the archive.
> You could probably host the whole thing on a Raspberry Pi with a USB
> stick, but I wouldn't want to.
When you need hosting for that kind of service we can offer a VM on our VMware ESXi 6.0
host in Amsterdam (on 44.137.42.0/27, BGP routed via 44.137.0.0/16).
There are 2 HPe Proliant servers each with local RAID-1 disks, a VM image is copied from
one host to the other nightly and we can change over manually on catastrophic hardware
failure. Offsite backups of the VM images are made as well.
It is connected to Internet at 1 Gbit/s and to our radio network at 40 Mbit/s.
Network access is via a MikroTik CCR router providing firewall configurable at port level.
This is where gw-44-137 runs.
Rob
All,
I've noticed some pings from portal.ampr.org:
> 2017-09-11 17:32:25.846 48.191 ICMP 81.174.235.134:0 ->
> 44.60.44.10:8.0 38 3192 1
Is this an automated software pinging?
- Lynwood
KB3VWG
