30 Jun
2013
30 Jun
'13
2:38 p.m.
I followed this topic with interest, but I see it in a different
perspective.
It seems that many of the people involved in this topic see the picture from
a glass tower.
Cisco and Juniper may be widespread at infrastructure/provider level, but we
should also take in account the fact that not all the ampr routing will be
implementable at provider level.
For example in Romania we have 3 major providers, covering more than 95% of
the end user market.
This competition resulted in extreme low prices for high speed internet
access (about 10 EUR/month for a 50Mbps fiber optics acces or a 20Mbps ADSL
link) but at home user level, some together with free mobile networking and
free nation wide hotspot access. On the other hand more advanced features
seen as "commercial" and "corporate" features come at extremly high
prices.
Just a fixed IP will pull another 2-3 EUR from ones pocket (if even
available to home users for a specific ISP), not speaking of BGP, which
jumps up at the levels of hundreds EUR/month. Also, the ISPs totally
reluctant in implementing features for our "obscure" hobbies lke amateur
radio which doesn't bring them major profits or a large number of new
customers.
In this light, is not necessary a matter of equipment, which is a one time
investment, but an issue of service availability. Any protocol for
interlinking ampr islands would need to be encapsulated, routable and able
to run over tunnels, otherwise the only option for us (I speak for YO) will
be to remain stucked with the IPIP tunnels forever.
On the other hand, universities, which usually are the front runners in such
endeavors efectly lost their interest for ham radio so advanced endpoints of
access which would be possible here are actually not available..
So today we are in a sad situation. Ampr net in YO is dying: 3 gateways
oficially left, with one of them hanging on a dynamic IP with no actual
services, one without a working gateway, and only my home system having a
working GW, with virtual no users.
Packet radio found APRS and survives, but unless we find a clear advantage
over existing internet services, the 44 network will disappear.
Marius, YO2LOJ