On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 1:45 AM, Bjorn Pehrson <bpehrson@kth.se> wrote:
Fearing interconnectivity with non-AMPR networks excludes us from taking advantage of network routes that would lower cost.  Example:  If we were given free global transit over Internet2 by different educational and scientific organizations but to do that would be to resign to the requirements of said groups, would you decline?

No, I would definitely not decline, I would be happy to accept, as long as it is free for non-commercial use.

So here is the flaw in your logic.  These educational and scientific organizations are not in the business of maintaining physical circuits.  That is left to the Level3's, Vodafone's and Cogent's of the world.  Each of these organizations lease circuits and dark fiber from them.  None of them have laid a single piece of cable from one country to another (with perhaps the exception being CERN).  They are in the business of Science!  Not telecommunications.  At some point you are left with peering on a commercial network broadcasting your routes.



, so why not long haul ham fiber?

Because laying Fiber is very, very expensive.  Companies have gone out of business doing it.  There are regulatory, permits, right of way issues... Not feasible in most places.  In Europe, you can connect whole cities easy enough but once you get outside the city into farmland.. the distances can get long.

Well, What is expensive is the civil works involved, so you need to share right of way and ducts/poles. I I am right now invoved in building 16 km metropolitan fibre rings in Somalia, starting with Hargeisa, using students and faculty members of Somalian universities, members of SomaliREN. 

Don,

Fibre is not that expensive You can buy cable with six fiber cores for less than a USD per meter.
If you only need one fibre pair. you can trade the rest in return for right of way and ducts or a permission to use someone's poles.

Regarding active equipment you can buy 1GE SFPs at ~20 USD, multiple SFP-port NICs and motherboards  at ~300USD, . The capex of a complete router with 6GE ports capable of routing 700 kpps at 20W (12VDC powered, sun, wind or whatever) is less than 1kUSD.


The fiber optic cable that you use to connect your server to your storage area network is not the same that goes into the ground or in the air or under the ocean.  Each of those applications use different cable that is much more expensive.  You are completely right that the cost is in "civil works".  

Labor is a major expense.  

Your analogy of using staff/students to string 16km (9 miles) of fiber while interesting and laudable doesn't apply.  We're talking about 1000's of km of long haul DWDM fiber optics and the equipment to boost the signal at regular distances.  Depending on where you are running it, you have to have equipment to run it through km's of conduit or across oceans where you have to deal with dragnetters.  

If multi-million dollar corporations and cities are having a hard time implementing it, what makes you think a group of blowhards wearing plastic antennas can do it better?
 
I don't think 44/8 will ever be commercial.  But you seem to think that by involving outside parties (profit or non-profit), the space will all of the sudden become eaten by mega-global-evil-corporation.  There are many other companies that have their own /8 who utilize commercial/non-commercial providers for their connectivity needs.  I don't think a single one has ever had their IP space *stolen* from them.
No, it is not the commercial actors I am after, they are perfectly respectable to me.
It is rather the fact that the 44/8 space is a very unique resource and I fear that it will be hard to defend the privilege if the difference between the 44/8 space and the rest of Internet disappears, just as the right to use the amateur bands would disappear if we start using them commercially.

While I completely understand your position and agree with it in some aspect, the fact is that 44net itself is not a space regulated by the IARU and other than whatever your country applies to free speech, is not bound to keeping with non-commercial/non-business rules.  It is a allotment of public network address space.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  When it travels over RF circuits under Amateur Radio Rules/Power Levels is when rules on message/packet content applies.  

 

But why not use Internet then if it is just a money-problem.?

We are right now as we converse.  IRLP and Echolink are sending audio streams to other RF repeaters over vast distances at this very moment because there is no direct RF path between them.  It's not just a money problem, it's a feasibility problem.  At some point the cost-benefit analysis tells you to stop.
You seem to forget that both IRPL and ECHOLINK use non-44/8 space a lot. It is possible to do that for other services as well and restrict the 44/8-space according to ham rules.

I didn't forget at all.  See my comment above.  44/8 space is not bound to ham content rules.  The only rule for 44net is that one should be held responsible for 3rd party traffic that flows over RF links which mirrors the rules of the license.

The reason that they use non-44/8 space goes back to why we need to allow global subnetting and routing on 44net. 
 
Using 44/8 is not a necessary requirement for feasibility.


Then why do we need 44/8 beyond consolidated public addressing?  Seems to me that it's more feasible for me to get a /27 block of public IP and route all my radio traffic through it.    The rest is just subnetting, tunneling and routing tricks.  

Oh yeah, because it's supposed to be a common routable network of devices for a specific group.  It's not meant to replace 2 meters.