On 29/7/21 2:04 am, Antonios Chariton (daknob) via 44Net wrote:
A lot of people out there not only don’t want, but also can't use the equipment that you use, for whatever reason. A lot of people out there don’t know what a VLAN is, or what DHCP is, or what a VPN is. They are also not interested in learning that, just so they can access X’s EchoLink Proxy or Y’s webSDR..
I think there comes a point where you can't lower the bar, because you run into the limitations of dumbed down routers and other artificial limitations.
Those of us running Internet facing services do our best to make sure they're available to anyone with a standard Internet connection (Hello BGP ;) ). When it comes to intranet or anything else similar, you're going to need something more than the ISP supplied router in many cases.
In some ways, the easy case is the user who wants intranet access from their phone - the phone's inbuilt VPN capabilities should do that nicely, but at home, there comes a point where some knowledge is required, so the user can make informed decisions. And there will also need to be careful routing in the infrastructure to handle corner cases like the user who runs 44.x intranet space on their LAN, using NAT to the Internet, their router's VPN client to a PoP for intranet access, and wanting to access Internet facing services.
And I believe the TAC proposal will address this, because presumably the VPN would route only 44.128/10 through the VPN. It does rely on a dumbed down router still having VPN capability and being able to change the LAN IP and network.
But what about the intranet user who wants to access Internet facing services? (this is already an issue in some cases anyway).
What we want is to make sure that the network we create is open to as many people as possible, regardless of knowledge, background, location, financial status, etc. By definition, this means that the bar must be as low as possible to join. That’s what we’re trying to do. Decrease this barrier. We don’t want to enforce static routers, or brands, or routers, we only want to decrease the barrier, as much as we can.
Yeah, fair point, though I believe education is important. Rather than just offering low barriers to entry, offer both the low barrier to entry and education, so hams can make an informed decision as to whether keeping things simple is for them, or if learning some basic networking so they can implement a more complex solution better fits their needs.