As the only one who have a working network in my country and the one who is the main person that help others in my country to setup a gateway or connected to the AMPRNET i can say the following :
1) the users dont understand what benefit they can get from it that regular internet can not do
for me the advantage are FIXED IP no need for DDNS more then one a IP fully accessible from the outside world without tricks of Port forwarding or NAT
2) most of the users are not network experts and dont have the skills to config router for IPIP tunnel
3) the setup is complicated require DDNS definition to put the DDNS name in the portal because most homes here use Dynamic IP The network speed is low and trying to do a video streaming from a home camera flew very slow and utilize the network for about half of its capacity and probably more
and most of the hams here are even not aware that we have an AMPRNET IP when i wrote a document about the AMPRNET and our (44.138) network the users asked me what is that for ...
I think we need to do few things in order to attract new users
1) increase the network capacity to allow modern services (video streaming , VOIP other...) 2) make publication about the AMPRNET 3) make very simple system to connect to the net (preferred by off the shelf routers such as Mikrotik or (less preferred) unix system as Raspberry pi it would be ideal to have an working image for raspberry pi for a gateway same as the PISTAR does (pi star is a system that allow to make from Raspberry pi and external card connected to analog radio a DMR gateway ider hotspot or repeater ) they provide image that all you have to do is change some parameters (such as callsign and other small thing ) and you are on even idiot can do it we need to do same for Pi gateway 4) provide services on the net for the users regards Ronen - 4Z4ZQ
________________________________ From: 44Net 44net-bounces+ronenp=hotmail.com@mailman.ampr.org on behalf of Rob Janssen via 44Net 44net@mailman.ampr.org Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2019 2:36 AM To: 44net@mailman.ampr.org 44net@mailman.ampr.org Cc: Rob Janssen pe1chl@amsat.org Subject: Re: [44net] 44 net connectivity
But, afer almost 20 years playing around witht his topic, I think the lack of specific network services on 44net is the actual element preventing the spread of its usage. The original goal was conectivity, global if possible. But there simply is no incentive for using it anymore. Dx clusters are reachable on the regular internet, repeaters and reflectors too. Specialized sites dedicated to contesting are homebrew stuff, or whatever, use regular internet access. They can not rely on a network where only 10k users are reachable. And BBS systems are outdated and replaced by forums, mailing lists and discussion groups on various platforms. Unless we can find desirable services that really need a "private" globally routeable network for them to work, there will be no real new users influx beyond the occasional network enthusiast.
I agree with that, it does not make much sense to run it as an isolated network. However, the 44net address space has enabled us to build a radio linked network and have infrastucture like repeaters, WebSDR, VoIP exchanges etc attached to it and also connect interested users to the same network. Without NAT issues.
For that network to be useful though, it needs to be connected to internet in a reasonably efficient way. That is why we announced our country network on internet, and now we can use the services both on the radio network and from internet. (of course as far as firewall rules permit, you really don't want to route all traffic from internet to your radio network...)
Still it is difficult to interest new users. However, when we get an interested user and he wants to setup some new service or experiment with what is there, shouldn't we make access to the network easy for new users, instead of making them fight with their router settings?
The 44net also often makes things easier by having transparent routing. E.g. to setup a system with echolink usually is a nightmare because of the port forwarding requirements. By connecting to 44net and putting the echolink system on a 44net address, the filtering in the ISP router is eliminated and it is much easier to make it working.
Rob
_________________________________________ 44Net mailing list 44Net@mailman.ampr.org https://mailman.ampr.org/mailman/listinfo/44net