>Yeah this thread kinda went off the rails. Originally we WERE talking about global Internet BGP. That is what the folks need that are using net-44 for IRLP, Allstar, Echolink, D-Star and various types of DMR. 44-net addresses that need access to and from the global Internet.
>It took my local data center provider about three weeks to set up advertising one of my /23. Mostly waiting for all of their upstream providers to accept the newly advertised routes. Vultr.com has a very slick set of tools allowing one to get it going in a few hours, assuming proper license from ARDC is obtained. Neither one charges anything extra for doing that.
>But it is nothing anyone here can do on their own from home. Basically it requires support from a large data center or ISP. All of my blocks are globally routable, courtesy of my data center providers. I run an implementation of OpenVPN on a Linux VM to pass individual addresses (/32) to client IRLP nodes.
Please understand that in the topology I am proposing (and have proposed several times in the past) you don't need to do that as an individual, it is left to local groups or ARDC to do that.
You would have a local router in some datacenter that advertises some segment of the net-44 space on internet (or preferably, the ISP does the advertising and just statically routes the incoming traffic to you). Then in that datacenter you have a router that allows incoming VPN connections from small routers at the individual's homes or repeater locations.
Those individual routers talk BGP as well, but that only travels between their router and the datacenter router. It is used to tell the datacenter router what subnet(s) of the net-44 space each one wants to receive. It does not influence what happens on the internet side, there it always receives the full /16../24 that is advertised on internet.
Now, the individuals and repeaters can build radiolinks between them, they will form the AMPRnet over radio for that region. Traffic will (with proper setup) select those radiolinks first, the link to the datacenter is used for traffic towards internet or when there is no radiolink available.
ARDC would arrange there is a full mesh (or almost full mesh) of GRE tunnels between all those datacenter routers where BGP is running as well. That means that redundancy can be built into the network, so you would not be dependent on a single router when you don't like that. You could setup a VPN to more than one datacenter router and again BGP will arrange that you will receive your network traffic, at least the AMPRnet traffic, at any time even when your main router is down.
In my opinion that is a much better solution than the IPIP mesh we have now, which is completely static and has your gateway system as a single point of failure.
Also it requires a mostly static IP, and possibility to forward the protocol 4 traffic to the gateway system. This is ever harder to get going on a modern internet connection that has a dynamic address and maybe even CGNAT. A VPN system does not suffer from that.
Rob
Someone asked a few weeks ago:
... the Trustees would presumably be completely free to give an
update on the planned relationship with CAIDA (UCSD Network
Telescope), and long-term sustainable plans for AmprGW?
The relationship between ARDC and UCSD's CAIDA research group remains as
it was before Brian Kantor's death. There is a Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU) between UCSD and ARDC that defines this
relationship. The MoU was negotiated between Brian (for ARDC), and the
UCSD management (for CAIDA). In particular, Brian wanted and succeeded
to get this arrangement nailed down before he retired from being on
staff at UCSD. The Network Telescope and the amateurs-to-Internet relay
operate from the same network infrastructure in a lab at UCSD. Both
parties gain from the arrangement. UCSD observes traffic sent to a large
section of unused address space, and has created an analysis environment
to facilitate its sharing of this data with vetted researchers. ARDC
gets a well maintained, high speed interconnect between its users and
the Internet.
Typical amateur tunneled traffic through AmprGW is well under a gigabit
per second, averaging about 30-60 megabits/sec, with bursts 60-90Mbps.
(This traffic occupies twice that bandwidth, since every packet that
comes in, then goes back out through one of hundreds of tunnels; and
vice verse.) Typical non-amateur, Telescope traffic, bursts to 800Mbps
and averages between 500 and 600 megabits/sec.
There are currently no plans to change this arrangement. However, the
main source of funding for the Telescope project expired this year, and
it is not yet clear whether or how the data-sharing (i.e., the expensive)
aspect of the project will continue.
On the plus side, the existing hardware and software that supports ARDC
is all paid for, installed, and running; it would involve work to tear
it down. From the ARDC side, Chris Smith, G1FEF, has full access to
AmprGW from the UK, and continues to maintain it as Brian did, with
intermittent "hands-on" help from a local CAIDA sysadmin. As BDale
recently reminded us, Chris also maintains other ARDC infrastructure such
as the Portal and the website, which run in virtual machines hosted
in various data centers.
If UCSD and CAIDA ever decided to cancel the MoU, shut down the Telescope,
and/or stop collaborating with ARDC, ARDC could move AmprGW to a virtual
machine in a well connected data center anywhere in the world. Now that
ARDC has more than nominal amounts of money, it can afford to pay for
bandwidth and servers. AmprGW remains at UCSD today, partly because
continuing that arrangement was simplest while scrambling to pick up the
pieces after Brian died; and partly to honor the MoU, and Brian's history
there, and to continue enabling Internet research worldwide, since CAIDA
provides access to telescope data to vetted academic researchers.
There are 4 pages of explanation, signatures, etc in the MoU, which is
a public record of the Regents of the University of California, accessible
under the California Public Records Act. Here are the relevent bits:
This agreement is not intended to be legally binding, and instead is
an aspirational document between the parties outlining
responsibilities, and expectations of the parties.
UCSD SHALL:
o Operate network hardware and software to provide colocation services
for the AMPRNet(TM) TCP/IP networks for Amateur Radio on UCSD
infrastructure.
o Agree to safeguard the UCSD equipment and network resources using
best practices for network management.
o Agree to use and comply with best practices for safeguarding data
to mitigate privacy and security concems and to comply with legal
requirements when using the data collected on AMPRnet's network
for research critical to the Center for Applied Internet Analysis
(CAIDA) research group located at the San Diego Super Computer
Center.
COLLABORATOR SHALL:
o Agree to allow UCSD to collect, filter and curate data destined
for the AMPRNet(TM) network for the purposes of network research and
responsible data sharing with the network and security research
communities.
COMMENCEMENT/EXPIRATION DATE. This agreement is executed as of the
date of last signature and is effective through [July 31, 2023] at
which time it will expire unless extended.
The U.S. federal research funding that supports the Telescope is:
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1730661
The proposal that NSF funded is this one:
https://www.caida.org/funding/stardust/
CAIDA's most recent slide deck about the Telescope is:
https://www.caida.org/publications/presentations/2019/stardust_dust/stardus…
The Principal Investigator of the Network Telescope is Alberto Dainotti
<alberto(a)caida.org>. He intends to release a new web site and
documentation for this project by the end of 2020. This will include
a list of research enabled by the telescope (papers, data, analysis
tools).
In the meantime, there is a preliminary Grafana dashboard that shows
that the Network Telescope is seeing (in real time, or from the past).
https://explore.stardust.caida.org/d/ClIeIwOMk/stardust-public-protocols
(It's work in progress! BTW, it uses Keycloak for authentication,
so people can now use github or globus credentials to log in).
Access to the Telescope data is controlled to preserve the privacy of
the users all over the Internet whose (typically malware-contaminated)
sites originated the packets. Researchers who use the data must sign a
contract agreeing to maintain that privacy. Note that none of the data
in this Network Telescope is the traffic of authorized amateur users.
All that traffic is filtered out before it is recorded for researchers
by the Telescope.
We are happy to take questions or feedback on this list or at the
community meeting next week.
John Gilmore, W0GNU
Board member and Secretary, ARDC
>>>/AMPRNet / HamNet routing is quite complicated for a non-IT guy... /
>>/The advantage of using BGP even in this trivial case is... /
>I don't think the most important question is about selling BGP or any
>particular technology (I'm well versed in internetwork engineering and
>worked in that field professionally for many years; I'm in academia
>now).
>I'm writing this because education was a specific question in the
>survey.
>The reason that we have amateur radio is to enable experimentation with
>using the radio spectrum in a way that is otherwise not permitted or
>practical. With the Internet, there are certain things that are only
>possible to experiment with if you have your own addresses and other
>network numbers. AMPRNet is (perhaps that's too strong, and we could
>say, "can be") a way of enabling a kind of experimentation on the
>Internet similar to what we do with the radio spectrum.
It is not clear to me what you are getting at here! These are different
layers of the cake. Your radio experimentation will result in some way
to transport bits from A to B, but not in a network. To build a network
you need another layer, and a way to define what you need to send where
to get your message to the destination. That is what BGP is handling.
By using BGP instead of static routing, we can connect many radio links
and other links together and make a network out of it without getting
buried in manual routing chores.
Please make sure you understand that the use of BGP I am mentioning here
has nothing to do with the use of BGP on internet to route all the internet
networks. It is the same protocol, but they are different use cases.
Don't get confused when people say they have their AMPRnet subnet BGP
routed to them on internet, and other people propose to use BGP internal
to the AMPRnet network to route things the correct way, these are two
different things.
Rob
> - AMPRNet / HamNet routing is quite complicated for a non-IT guy. BGP
requires huge equipment and skills. IPIP requires hacking protocol
redirect on Internet boxes. Those are not easy things for people
operating a voice repeater or hotspot. They just build a Pi image, plug
the machine, and it works. Why should they bother with complex addressing ?
We have quite some repeaters that are connected via AMPRnet.
We normally use MikroTik routers. I do not consider these "huge
equipment" and they are not difficult to configure with BGP.
I have some example configs for setting up an endpoint with L2TP/IPsec
tunnel to our gateway router and using BGP to advertise their own subnet.
This is much easier to get going than IPIP, for example there is no need
to touch the existing internet router (open ports/protocols not required).
This even makes it suitable for installation on buildings where the
owner may make available some guest internet access but would not want
you to tweak their network to pass IPIP.
The advantage of using BGP even in this trivial case is that the network
can now be extended when the opportunity arises without having another
hurdle of complexity.
A WiFi link to another station can be added, e.g. in some cases people
have an internet connection at an amateur nearby the repeater, and then
a WiFi link to the repeater itself.
I would be all for rolling out such a system worldwide to replace the
IPIP mesh.
Routers (e.g. MikroTik CHR that can run as a VPS) in datacenters all
over the world interconnected with a static tunnel mesh and offering VPN
service for local amateurs to connect, and routing using BGP on private
AS (this only routes AMPRnet, not full internet).
In different places those routers could have the AMPRnet subnet(s) for
that region announced on internet, like we do for 44.137.0.0/16 and
others do for other country networks.
And each of those can offer different VPN technologies so you are able
to follow the trend of the day without having to do a migration in the
entire network.
Rob PE1CHL
Good evening,
it's been a while since I had to add/change/delete DNS entries in the ampr.org DNS zone. The email robot I've used in the past seems to have gone. Could someone please point me into the right direction how this is done nowadays?
vy 73 de Marc, LX1DUC
39th Annual ARRL / TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC)
THIS WEEK - Friday, September 11th & Saturday, 12th
DCC will be a virtual conference using Zoom video communications and YouTube video-sharing platforms.
DCC information, Technical Papers, Presentation Schedule & Registration Available at:
DCC Information
DCC Technical Papers
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Non-registered DCC attendees can watch the live stream for free on YouTube,
however non-registered DCC attendees will not be able to ask questions or chat.
No registration is required for YouTube access.
The YouTube URL will be announced and posted on this webpage preceding the DCC.
DCC registration is free for TAPR members and $30 for non-members.
Members receive a 100% discount at checkout.
Non-members who would like to join TAPR and receive the free DCC pass can simply add TAPR membership and DCC registration to their shopping carts.
After checkout, they will receive the free DCC pass when their membership is processed.
Mike,
DD-WRT is not known to provide a method to compile/install the necessary software (i.e. a RIP44 routing daemon). Aside from this, I cannot recall if a tunnel can be established. Nonetheless, if you were to succeed standing up a tunnel, you'd need the routing daemon to properly configure your reply traffic. This routing daemon concern may be overcome by employing a Munge Script (hopefully DD-WRT has some tools like: `curl`, `ftp`, `grep`, `fgrep`, `sed`, `sort` and `diff` installed in the firmware).
https://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Munge_script
You can start testing using commands from the startampr, OpenWrt, Ubuntu and/or Linux setup guides on the Wiki. Feel free to ask any questions (when you can stand up a tunnel). I've never used the Munge Script method, I'm sure others have (I should note that there's a script posted that can parse the encap.txt file - it's located on the Firewall page). The `ip tunnel` commands in `startampr` should be of help to test establishing the tunnel.
https://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Startampr#Script
---
- Prior to using OpenWrt, I personally forwarded IPENCAP (IP Protocol No. 4) to a gateway running Ubuntu Server. - https://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Firewalls#DD-WRT
- Also see "Static IPENCAP Filtering of AMPR Nodes" here: https://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Firewalls#iptables
73,
- Lynwood
KB3VWG
Does anyone know how to set up an AMPRnet gateway on a router with DDWRT? I don't want to use OPENWRT based on previous experience.
Thanks,
Mike, AA9VI
All,
First, welcome to the new Director and thanks for the work Chris!
I wanted to inform those with OpenWrt-based nodes that version 19.07.4 should fix an MSS clamping bug that was reported to the developers. Some of you that setup OpenWrt routers have noted to me that MSS seemed problematic in one direction. I've worked around this with other OpenWrt operators by placing MSS clamping on the LAN as well as the tunnel-facing sides of the OpenWrt config. Hopefully 19.07.4 fixes the need for this.
https://openwrt.org/releases/19.07/notes-19.07.4#major_bug_fixes
73,
- Lynwood
KB3VWG