23 Jul
2019
23 Jul
'19
4:36 a.m.
But, afer almost 20 years playing around witht his
topic, I think the lack of specific network services on 44net is the actual element
preventing the spread of its usage.
The original goal was conectivity, global if possible.
But there simply is no incentive for using it anymore. Dx clusters are reachable on the
regular internet, repeaters and reflectors too. Specialized sites dedicated to contesting
are homebrew stuff, or whatever, use regular internet access. They can not rely on a
network where only 10k users are reachable. And BBS systems are outdated and replaced by
forums, mailing lists and discussion groups on various platforms.
Unless we can find desirable services that really need a "private" globally
routeable network for them to work, there will be no real new users influx beyond the
occasional network enthusiast.
I agree with that, it does not make much sense to run it as an isolated network.
However, the 44net address space has enabled us to build a radio linked network and have
infrastucture like repeaters, WebSDR, VoIP exchanges etc
attached to it and also connect interested users to the same network. Without NAT
issues.
For that network to be useful though, it needs to be connected to internet in a reasonably
efficient way.
That is why we announced our country network on internet, and now we can use the services
both on the radio network and from internet.
(of course as far as firewall rules permit, you really don't want to route all traffic
from internet to your radio network...)
Still it is difficult to interest new users.
However, when we get an interested user and he wants to setup some new service or
experiment with what is there,
shouldn't we make access to the network easy for new users, instead of making them
fight with their router settings?
The 44net also often makes things easier by having transparent routing.
E.g. to setup a system with echolink usually is a nightmare because of the port forwarding
requirements.
By connecting to 44net and putting the echolink system on a 44net address, the filtering
in the ISP router is eliminated
and it is much easier to make it working.
Rob