31 May
2016
31 May
'16
11:49 p.m.
Hello Arnold,
Though your network background will significantly help you come up to
speed, there is a lot of unique nuances to amateur radio centric
networking. This is one the fun parts of the hobby (to me) so I would
encourage you do build up your own system and not try to buy something
already build for you. . Much of the systems everyone here uses are is
homebrewed with Linux machines, old Wifi routers, etc. Some of it can
use modern over the shelf HW from say Mikrotik, Ubiquiti, etc. Some
things to ponder:
- Packet radio using AX.25 (not TCP/IP) speeds range from 300baud on
HF to 19.2K+ on VHF - Personal favorite of mine and feel very similar to
the dialup BBSes from days past. A computer + soundcard (or a HW TNC) +
radio will get you on the air. I personally run the Direwolf software
based TNC on Centos Linux. This is the same foundation that runs APRS
- AMPR IPIP tunneling networks - that's this group which creates and
maintains a fully meshed network of IPIP protocol "VPNS". Other HAMs
offer IPSEC based VPNs as an alternative to the IPIP system Many of
these networks are created via either Linux machines or BBS applications
running on Linux -Jnos and other NOS systems (network operating
systems). AMPR 44/8 routes are propagated either via BGP, a customized
version of RIP, or a static routes list that can be scripted to update
your system's route table.
- Broadband HamNet / HSMM - Wifi mesh networking using select legacy
Wifi APs (Linksys, etc) but also supports select modern Ubiquti APs for
very fast IP networking assuming you have nearby peers to work with
Ultimately, you won't learn all the details and nuances that makes up
these technologies if you just "buy it". You need to build it to learn
it. To start your education, start here:
http://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Main_Page
Beyond that, this is the right group to talk about AMPR related
networking and I'm sure lots of people here can extensively talk about
some of the points above as well.
--David
KI6ZHD