On 3/6/12 11:14 AM, Brian Kantor wrote:
I've gotten several requests for directly routed subnets (ie, BGP announced CIDR blocks as subnets of 44/8, not tunneled) for ham radio use. These are people who want to set up HSMM networks in the ham bands, D-Star constellations, etc.
I thought I'd ask folks what they think of the idea of setting aside part of the address space for that purpose?
I think we should not stand in the way of any useful experimentation or development of amateur radio, and as that increasingly includes IP-based interfaces we should welcome that work in 44/8. As with all amateur activity it is up to the licensee to assure that operation is within Part 97 requirements.
It's also a way to ensure that the UCSD router isn't overwhelmed with traffic, which might be a problem if everything were tunneled through it. Just as traffic from one 44-net gateway can reach another without going through the ampr tunnel, it should be possible for other users in public IP space to do so.
Last I looked at it, there were a couple of hosts in Europe doing this already, has there been any problem from that? Is there any reason that a separate address space is needed? I can imagine that a gateway might want to advertise a different route, perhaps with more filtering, via BGP to the public internet, from the route available through the traditional tunnel protocol.
What issues do you see arising from doing so?
There should be provision in the existing encap.txt/rip44d protocols to include routes to the new gateways. Gateway operators should be reminded to check that the routes they advertise on BGP don't conflict with tunneled routes. Routing might be different, but we should strongly suggest that routes be provided through the traditional gateway to any address also served by BGP, so that a user anywhere could reach the services intended to be provided on that host regardless of the route taken (but leaving the option open for different filtering based on route.)
73 de WA6NMF