Hi all,
Le 29/09/2020 à 22:30, pete M via 44Net a écrit :
Allstarlink are using 44 net space and are giving a great service to link repeaters. I already give to them from time to time.
The Brandmeister server team could also be supported. (As an admin of the canadian server I do have some personal interest. )
Here in France, AllStar, Brandmeister, but also most of digital voice things such as Echolink, D-Star, DMR, XLX, DVSwitch, SVXLink and so on, are mostly using public Internet connections. Maybe because it's easier, and because lots of Plug-and-Play images are available for tiny computers such as Raspberry Pi.
As we are a "closed" community, and most of those systems must be restricted to licensed HAMs due to regulations, having most of them connected through AMPRNet / HamNet addressing would IMHO have a sense.
But in fact, very few of us have their digital voice systems connected through AMPRNet / HamNet addressing.
Why ?
Here are some guesses :
- AMPRNet / HamNet routing is quite complicated for a non-IT guy. BGP requires huge equipment and skills. IPIP requires hacking protocol redirect on Internet boxes. Those are not easy things for people operating a voice repeater or hotspot. They just build a Pi image, plug the machine, and it works. Why should they bother with complex addressing ? -> Maybe we should target Plug-and-Play system makers (such as Pi-Star for ex.) so that AMPRnet addressing is integrated in a plug-and-play manner
- Make things simpler and easier to use. We often discussed about that. Here, in Corsica (a tiny island in the Mediterranean sea), we've been experimenting a new approach : - Plug-and-Play boxes (basically, OpenWRT, making 5 GHz connection to a peer, or building a VPN tunnel to a central gateway). It's an outgoing VPN, so that it works behind any Internet provider (without opening ports and so on). The first tries were using OpenVPN, but we are now migrating to Wireguard (light abd efficient). - A central gateway on the islans, which manages the complex routing to "the rest of the world". We loose the full-mesh capability of IP-IP, but we get Plug-and-Play. And that's great !
- This is our approach at TKNet, but there are other implementations elsewhere in the world. The common idea is a decentralized network by geographic areas : a central gateway for the area (ie, a country, a region, an island), managed by a regional team, and local users connecting to this gateway in a Plug-and-Play manner.
- Only one VPN server in the East coast of the US does not have much sense in terms of latency for world-wide users, mostly for VoIP applications. Pings are far too long. To be efficient, VPN servers must be closer from people (by country, or at least, by continent)
- Some interesting ideas about IPv6 have already been submitted here. I'm not using IPv6 at all in my job, so I never tried experimenting with it for HAM networks. But there's room for investigation.
As a conclusion, the main idea is : - Make use of AMPR addressing simpler, so that *every* HAM application using Internet can be migrated to AMPRNet / HamNet. - "Evangelize" AMPRNet addressing, so that every software developer / integrator (people who build ready-to-use RPi images) can implement it
73 de TK1BI