Now that we are all going to have to dive into our router
configurations, wouldn't it be a
good time to make some changes that are long overdue?
Like getting rid of the IPIP mesh and replace it with something more
modern and supported
by off-the-shelf routers, works behind NAT, etc?
I would say setup some routers with VPN of different types around the
world, have everyone
connect to there using a suitable VPN protocol, run BGP on it to
announce the gateway subnets.
A $50 MikroTik can do those jobs, for those that still want to run a
JNOS system on MS-DOS
they can put one in front of their box and still use it. People are
already using it for IPIP mesh,
a change in topology would be only a config change for them. And other
routers mentioned
here can do it too, without having to get external programs installed on
them.
Those that want direct connection without a centralized system in the
path can simply setup
a VPN connection between them and configure the BGP peers, it will
automatically work.
There is no need to use only a single protocol in such a network, only
the peers have to agree,
so you can select from anything like L2TP/IPsec, OpenVPN, Wireguard,
just plain GRE or even IPIP,
etc etc. Just at this time I am trying to move my colocated machine
that runs as an IPIP mesh
member and I face that stupid "protocol 4 is not passed by the firewall"
problem again. Arghh!!
Also we could get that IPv6 idea going. Remember it has been discussed
many times and the
only things we still need is some agreement on how to register and
distribute the "list of AMPRnet
prefixes in IPv6 space". Again that could be done using BGP, no need to
setup yet another
registration portal with downloadable files.
Note that Daniel EA4GPZ put some ideas around IPv6 on his site:
https://destevez.net/ipv6-for-amateur-radio/
Rob