19 Apr
2018
19 Apr
'18
3:50 p.m.
For some time we have been hosting Echolink proxies and relays on the system that is the
gateway for 44.137.0.0/16 (BGP routed) in Amsterdam, Netherlands. We use a /24 subnet for
that.
Such proxies and relays facilitate the use if Echolink by users and repeaters that are
behind NAT
or are otherwise firewalled. About 100 repeaters around the world use our proxies, and
over 600
users of the mobile app use our relays.
Each Echolink proxy and relay requires a different IPv4 address. This can be a static
address on
internet, but often people have no /24 to spare for such things. AMPRnet provides the
required
address space. (unfortunately with an unintended side-effect, but in general it works
well)
For performance of the Echolink system it would be best when there are more places with a
similar
setup, distributed around the globe.
Are there other BGP-routed sites outside Europe where such a service could be run?
I have written a C program for this, that uses considerably less resources than the
original Java
software. On a 2.67GHz XEON server it causes a load around 0.05 for our 200 proxies and
10 relays.
Of course it makes some network traffic, about 3 GB/day for the relays and similar for the
proxies.
When you have your gateway located in a suitable datacenter and are interested in such a
setup
to facilitate Echolink, please send me an e-mail and I can provide more info.
Maybe we could even get the whole echolink.org infra hosted on AMPRnet space, which would
solve
the problem there now is with partially connected AMPRnet networks.
(when the directory server is on AMPRnet, the problem with NAT between HAMNET and internet
disappears)
Rob