23 Feb
2016
23 Feb
'16
5:17 a.m.
I have some questions (most are not technically)
1)how much downtime you had lets say the last year (i mean downtime not because of
server upgrade) i mean because server failure or software failure
Nearly zero, as far as I am aware. We were offline for about 20 minutes because of the
installation of the second
machine that required everything to be moved and that did not go as planned because the
server rack mounting rails
did not fit and a solution had to be found.
Last night there was router maintenance in the datacenter and we were offline for a few
seconds for the VRRP (I think)
switchover. This means a few alerts appeared in our monitoring. But normally we are
always on.
The mobile device Echolink traffic of half the globe passes through this server...
(we are hosting the Echolink Relays 44.137.75.240 - 44.137.75.249 and 200 Echolink Proxy
servers)
2) where do you get budget for buying such a server
and hosting at ISP farm is it a donation ? or the amateur pay this?
We get the machines for free, they are left-overs from datacenters that get donated to us
via amateurs working
in that business. Those companies replace their servers after 3 years or so, and they are
still in good condition to use.
The ISP XS4ALL generously gives us the BGP announcing for free, there are radio amateurs
working there who arranged this for us.
Other running costs are covered by donations from amateurs. We run a lot of services that
the amateur community appreciates,
like a country-wide 2m and 70cm FM relay with 3 co-channel transmitters on high sites and
17 receivers spread over the country.
It attracts a lot of activity, you can talk to anyone here on 70cm with just a portable
from most locations.
Also relays for DMR, D-Star, ATV etc. The amprnet is used as a network for that. Of
course the work hours are free :-)
But of course those in the team always pay a lot of the small costs, which add up as well.
Fortunately the team is quite large.
You can find some detail at our website http://hobbyscoop.nl/
At the moment this is only in Dutch, of course you can visit it via Google Translate.
and after all i solute you for all the services you
provide there (im now trying to connect our only P25 repeater to a world wide network)
its consider minor to what you do there .
I am interested in that as well... we do not run P25 here I think, what network is that?
Does it use some form of VPN to secure the connection?
(usually this is done because those devices are not hardened enough to put directly on the
internet of today)
Of course everyone experiments with the things he is interested in and can collect the
resources for.
So I really encourage you to do experiments with what you have available!
(except trying to make a fully functional IPIP gateway with a Cisco router... but that is
my personal opinion:-)
Rob