What I meant was to give an example of an "outbound traffic" application since inbound traffic is controversial. You are of course right, that upstream connections from the individual remote nodes are lower frequency applications, but when aggregating towards the central repository, the data volumes build up. I guess there must be other outbound traffic applications of a similar nature where amateurs can be useful, e.g densifiction of the grids of websdr, wspr, radio telescopes, etc
And after all, to allow both in and outbound traffic applications between radioamateurs over the world is just a matter of putting proper authentication and authorization mechanisms in place, right?. I guess Echolink has accomplished that in a sense already although their method is a bit too manual. The academic world has accomplished this via grids, science gateways, certification and Identity provider authourities, etc. Like eduroam, edugain, etc.
Would that be a way to go?
On 07/08/2013 10:17 PM, Michael E. Fox - N6MEF wrote:
(Please trim inclusions from previous messages) _______________________________________________ Bjorn,
Same problem, at least here in the States. If I use ham frequencies to transmit the data to a site that has Internet access, then that's fine. The public access wouldn't use the ham frequencies. But we can't allow the public to access the systems across amateur frequencies. That's not allowed by our FCC rules.
Also, as you mention, I would think that collecting environmental monitoring telemetry is a fairly low-bandwidth activity and the locations are usually not places where you could or would want to put up a tower and dish, etc. for clear line-of-site in the GHz range. I'm guessing that a lower power VHF solution that's much more forgiving of line-of-site issues, much less visually intrusive, and would probably make more sense for that application.
This discussion started with someone suggesting the use of the higher bands to get higher bandwidths so we could drive more usage with better applications. I'm all for it. But I'm hoping we can come up with what those applications are.
Michael N6MEF