15 Mar
2012
15 Mar
'12
3:20 p.m.
When talking about arrangements with major network providers, since I
come from an academic environment and often use amateur resources for
academic experiments, I am thinking of the global research and higher
education networks, like Internet2 in the US, RedClara in Latin America,
GÉANT in Europe, TEIN and others in Asia etc.
I think it is worth trying making the case for them to route subnets out
of 44/8. I am prepared to take a discussion over here about the
possibility to route the Nordic country subnets via Nordunet/GÉANT and
some African subnets via the corresponding regional networks in Africa.
I am working with African partners on environment data collection for
research for example.
The enforcement could perhaps also be delegated to trusted
regional/national organisations. Since we have a change in coordination
of the Swedish subnet 44.140/16, I am discussing with the Swedish
national Radioamateur organisation, which has a delegation from the
Swedish telecom regulator to issue radio amateur licences (www.ssa.se),
to be the supervisor of the use here in Sweden, re-delegating the work
involved with time-limited agreements with interested local clubs and
dedicated individuals.
Bjorn
On 2012-03-15 08:11, Dan Jameyson wrote:
Oh yes, agree.
It's worth keeping for ham licensed use. As far as "non-profit"
dynamics, I'm more thinking if arrangements would ever need to be made
with a major network provider. That actually speaks to the
multi-homing concept. By way of background, I'm getting into the
old-school "mainframe" theory of virtualization, and one elegance I
have come to appreciate, is how easy it is to separate network
traffic. Large IT departments use it to maintain security and vendor
license policies; that same technique can be used to segregate
"licensed" RF-derived traffic from "unlicensed" traffic. It's a
great
tool, but like everything else in our precious microcosm, it all comes
down to the honesty of the ham operators.
Regarding the delegations (which you mentioned in a note after this
one), I like the idea -- but, enforcement of such IT policies
necessitates monitoring infrastructure (and its back-cataloging and
databasing), bandwidth to service that monitoring, and people to run
and maintain infrastructure, etc. That's a big cost-sink for what
should be trusted to operators maintain best engineering practices.
IMHO, I'm thinking that as an ideal, every IP should be routable via a
licensed RF interface -- something on our own HF/VHF/UHF/microwave
band plan. But, that's a purist ideal to strive for, not necessarily a
practicality.
On the other note (regarding the radio links), I've recently become
very interested in the legacy commercial microwave networks -- they
were everywhere 20 years ago, but around here (East San Francisco Bay
Area, California, USA) they have been phased out in favor of
fiber-optic technology. The microwave technology is still very
powerful, and has advantages in portability versus land-lines. That's
an expensive prospect for an individual... but it's still out there,
within our band plan, and could be very useful as a back-up to "Mother
Bell" and an alternate way to integrate public safety infrastructure
(i.e., multiple police, fire, and medical systems). I really like the
idea of pushing to put up and improve real RF links -- that just made
my day, right there!
DS Jameyson
W4DSJ