Re: [44net] hardware vs. software

John, Thanks for the links. The first one may have potential. The second, I'm greatly underwhelmed though I wish you well with it! Amateur radio, especially in the realm of data communications aka - bits streamed over the ether seems to have an issue with NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome and constant reinvention of the wheel. While innovation is a good thing, what good is it if no one adopts and uses it. 56K while still faster than 1k2 is still reasonably slow. If you want to start with something that the masses will find interesting start at about 768k (half a T1) and go up from there. Dstar - while it claims to be open to anyone, Icom is really the only major manufacture making gear for it and only amateur radio uses it. Dstar is an island unto itself. The question I pose is how is Dstar or a 56k radio modem either an advancement of the radio art or an augment to what we have presently.... especially at the proposed price point. Hams are generally cheap. Where is the mass adoption of a 56k radio modem (the fact it hangs on ethernet was a good choice but why bother at such a bitrate....) coming from. no one adopted previous 56k modems either. also 70cm is to low in frequency. We have what a meager 30Mhz of spectrum there that's filled with repeaters, ATV, weak signal, EME, various radar QRM (and in some areas 70cm isn't even permitted for amateur radio use due to radar being primary), and contention by other users of the band. Compare this to the amateur microwave bands 13cm (upper part 2390-2450 - 60MHZ widely unused also paired with 802.11b/g), 9cm (3300-3500 - 200Mhz widely unused, just below current 802.11y spectrum with some radios tunable there), 5cm (5650-5925 - 275Mhz widely unused, overlaps 802.11a), 3cm (10-10.5Ghz - 500Mhz of which a couple beacons run here and there, a few khz of sporadic EME and weak signal activity occasionally happens, and a couple khz more of it gets used contest weekends, really close to existing commercial gear in frequency useage), 1.25cm (1.5Gb/s commercial gear fits squarely in this band and as hams we could repackage this tech for much improved EIRP & thus longer core network backhauls.). The 5Ghz and below stuff has multimegabit link speed, a price in the 100-300usd range at retail (same price as a decent HT or mobile rig), and is plug and play. The 10 & 24 Ghz stuff that would sit on high towers and mountaintops supporting the network core prices out to 1500usd/endpoint which is cheaper than a decent voice repeater and could be sponsored/supported the same way. really the cost factors here are quite disruptive and well within the reach of hams if we'd just DO. Based upon what the bell system guys were doing 50 years ago, it seems that 45Mbps over a 70-100km radio link appears it ought to be doable.... but really, 10Mbps over 50km would be a good start. Let's raise the bar a bit and get to building a RADIO BASED NETWORK! Eric AF6EP On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 4:28 PM, K7VE - John <k7ve(a)k7ve.org> wrote: