Hi,
Le 22/07/2019 à 05:03, Michael Fox - N6MEF via 44Net a écrit :
... force all connectivity to pass through hubs managed by people with no service level agreement with those they serve. I certainly want no part of that
The purpose, art least for now, is not to remove anything, nor to force anybody. The purpose is to test newer things. We are still discussing about what would be possible or not. Some of us are using such "different" things in their region. We are trying to see if we can normalize that.
Also, you haven't identified the problem you're trying to solve. It would help to have a clear statement of the problem.
For me, the main problem is IP-IP : - Non-standard implementation, requiring specific software (not a real problem, anyway) - No security at all (password sent in plain text) - Difficult implementation for non-experts. It requires a "protocol redirection" on the Internet box. With some operators, while it's possible to redirect a "port", redirecting a "protocol" is simply impossible.
Here, we are using a "Plug and Play" TKbox : the end-user just connects it, and it works, whatever the operator, the technology or the Internet modem. It even works through 3G, or in some locations where "low points" are gracefully hosted by third-party partners on their business networks.
A system with regional hubs, while still offering the capability to cross-connect, is much more extensible.
I heard you the first time. But you still haven't addressed the problems they introduce: -- increased latency and jitter
Not necessarily. This depends on the placement of the gateway, and the way the Internet operators built their networks. Moreover, I'm living on an island where 35ms is the minimal latency for any Internet link, which means 70 ms for point-to-point. Even if we'd like to reduce it, and we are doing investments for that, a high latency does not seem to cause critical problems. We have VoIP with different technologies connected (analog, D-Star, DMR, Echolink), and it works...
-- increased troubleshooting complexity (no end-to-end troubleshooting by the two endpoints)
Again, not necessarily. The operators of the gateways are usually skilled network specialists, which may greatly improve troubleshooting. Moreover, we are not talking about preventing people from building point-to-point communications ! We are just thinking about al alternate way that would be plug-and-play, and more easy to use for non-specialists.
-- very few existing gateways will have a BGP connection to their ISP, so most will lose direct connectivity to other gateways and be at the mercy of some hub operator somewhere
Anybody can create a hub. The idea is to have more hubs all over the world. Any end-user can connect to the hub of its choice. In the ideal situation, it would connect to several hubs, with redundancy between them (for ex, a "regional" hub, and a "national" hub with lower priority). Nobody will be at the mercy of nobody. Everybody will be able to do what he wants to do (and not what other people decided for him).
Moreover, about BGP, we already talked about solutions very easy to implement for $5/month at vultr.com.
-- hubs are operated by volunteers with no service level agreement with their users, no consequences whatsoever if they don't want to help during dinner or when they are out at a movie or sick or on vacation or whatever. No consequences if they simply decide they don't want to do it anymore.
To avoid that, you just have to connect to several hubs. Or build your own in your area. If we agree on some kind of normalization for our hubs, setups will be well documented, and more easy to implement for any volunteer.
Anyway, hubs will not replace direct mesh between users. It's just that, for now, we don't know how to do mesh in a PnP manner behind an end-user Internet box. Any idea is welcome.
- If you want to provide a solution for folks who can't use IPIP, then that's awesome. Go for it. Build a hub (or multiple hubs) and offers VPN connections or whatever/however you want. In fact, I think some people already do that.
Yes, some of us are already doing that, and it works well :-) We're now trying to normalize our technologies, so that we can inter-operate more easily, and that such hubs become more easy to built by local / regional teams.
- Getting started on the IPIP mesh is difficult. So, if you have a better solution for **DIRECT** connections than the existing IPIP mesh, then let's hear that. But once you're up on the mesh, there's literally nothing to do and it works great. So until you have a better solution for **DIRECT** connections, it makes no sense to destroy the direct connectivity that 500 gateways currently enjoy, along with the automated configuration, ease of troubleshooting, etc. and, above all, ZERO dependence on some other volunteer's operation of a hub.
We don't want to destroy anything :-) We're just trying to displace the technical difficulty from the end-user to a local team, and doing mesh between gateways (which may easily have networking capabilities such as fixed IP, BGP, and skilled people). Most of end-users are not capable, or don't want to bother, with IP-IP. If the user has a problem with its IP-IP configuration, he will call... you ! So, your zero-dependancy argument is wrong, HI :-) Why are so much D-Star or DMR repeater sysops connecting their machines directly to Internet ? Because AMPRNet / HamNet is too difficult, and they don't see any reason to bother with it !
Our first networking attempt here used IP-IP on an ADSL box, as a low-point to feed a repeater on a high point. One week later, it stopped working. The QRP had latency on its gaming system, he called the ISP, and it reset the Internet box, which killed the IP-IP protocol redirection :-( That's what decided us to try something else, and that's what we did with TKBoxes.
73 de TK1BI