[44net] Fwd: Re: Time to restructure the network ? For what ? Being sold like old socks ?

(Re-post in plain text) Not my most productive message of the year, but as Ronen 4Z4ZQ just said (in an empty message), "it comes from the heart"... I have huge respect for people who have been managing AMPRNet on their free time for years, I agree with the sale decision, but I clearly do not agree with what some "ARDC Board Members" said publicly (see below). Just a personal feeling, and I wanted to say it. I won't add anything else to the advocacy. Sorry for the inconenience. 73 de TK1BI -------- Message transféré -------- Sujet : Re: [44net] Time to restructure the network ? For what ? Being sold like old socks ? Date : Sun, 21 Jul 2019 08:32:20 +0200 De : Toussaint OTTAVI <t.ottavi(a)bc-109.com> Pour : AMPRNet working group <44net(a)mailman.ampr.org> Hi Rob, Le 19/07/2019 à 11:42, Rob Janssen a écrit : Of course, testing new things, trying to "modernize" our old network topology, and start thinking about IPv6, is probably the most clever thing we can do. That's what we're trying to do (quite modestly) here, in Corsica. We are using Plug and Play TKBoxes, with OpenWRT, OpenVPN and internal OSPF routing. Doing NAT traversal is easy for outbound, but it does not work for inbound connections. That's why our setup relies on a central gateway, which manages all the in/out communications. It's less fault-tolerant than a full-mesh. But for now, I do not see how to do a full mesh with automatic NAT traversal. This topology works fine for us, because we're an island with two big cities. So, a dual-star network, with two redundant entry points, seems quite natural. But this may not apply everywhere. Maybe it's possible to create some "regional" or "country-wide" platforms ? Before, we had a full-mesh and a gateway in San Diego. Maybe we can have more distributed platforms and gateways over the world... Communications from/to Internet are mandatory nowadays; we can't just ignore them and continue working in "closed" networks. There are a lot of technical things to investigate and try here... * **But my main question is WHY ? Why should we continue spending our time and our money, with the risk of being sold as old socks ?* If I clearly understand, and agree, with the sale of 1/4 of the AMPRNet address range, I don't really understand why we were not informed before, which would have allowed everybody to contribute to the debate, and to be involved in the final decision. I'm from a tiny country who initiated what is probably the first democratic constitution of the modern era in 1755, and it's known that it inspired the United States constitution. So, this kind of "monarchical" decision makes me very disappointed and sad. * **More threatening : I discussed on Facebook "Ham Radio Operators" group with a guy (Bill HORNE) which clearly advocates for the sale of the full AMPRNet range, and which even tries to give arguments for that !* That makes me say : What am I doing here, and shouldn't I switch to something else before I'm sold to Amazon or Google ? This is nothing more than a (disappointed and sad) personal feeling... PS : Sorry if I can't answer in  the next 10 days, I'll switch to a more brain-cleaner activity : a music festival ;-) 73 de TK1BI