Not as a whole, of course, but pieces of it. I thought we were talking about announcing bits and pieces elsewhere at the globe than at UCSD and SF Bay Area to avoid as much global tunneling as possible, or? On 2012-03-16 19:27, Tim Pozar wrote:

Fine, thanks On 2012-03-16 19:56, Tim Pozar wrote:

Well, Perhaps I have jumped to conclusions believing the idea was to see AMPRnet as a network with intradomain-routing+iBGP inside and eBGP peering interdomain? Otherwise we would just split up AMPRnet, or? On 2012-03-17 00:09, Antonio Querubin wrote:

I am not totally sure how the ASes work. Doesn't the AS sit above the other routers kind of a super router that talks to the other ASes. if had an AS would we not then need to pay for paths to reach all of the end point networks or would you just transit back via tunnels? my understanding it that if we(in Atlanta) want our upstream to route a 44 subnet to our router over our upstream provider. Since we don't have a way to route all traffic globally behind the AS it would not do us much good. Maybe I am totally wrong on how this works I have just a little info....and that makes me dangerous. or maybe you have another reason related to the tunnel systems. Lin

An AS is from a formal point of view just a number that you need to peer with other ASes as an independent network with your own policies, including routing policies, ethics, acceptable use policies, etc. There is no extra hardware. You use the AS-number when setting up external BGP peerings in your border router(s), in which you tell your peers what routes you want to export and whether you want transit or not, while they tell you what routes they want to import and whether they offer transit or not. This is what is currently done in the AMPR border router at UCSD of of their AS (AS7377). And by making a traceroute to ampr.org = 44.0.0.1 you can see that AMPRnet has its transit via CENIC (Corporation for Educational Networking in California), the californian regional research and education network backbone. If peering would be allowed elsewhere than out of the UCSD AS, you would either have to accept the policies of another local AS in your area, or use a dedicated AS for AMPRnet. The former will have an impact on what you can do and not do that would not necessarily be compatible with the goals you would like to achieve with AMPRnet. The latter definitely sounds to me as the rational thing to do if the intention is to develop AMPRnet as a global ham resource with its own policies. This is exactly what the AS concept is for and I do not see any problem for AMPRnet to get an AS-number. Regarding tunneling, you have to differentiate between the external peering (interdomain routing) and internal peering/routing between AMPRnet subnetworks (intradomain). if you allow external peering anywhere, the need for tunneling to the one and only border router at UCSD to go to Internet disappears since each subnet can peer with any other local network, even at a local Internet Exchange Point, and get transit to Internet locally. This means that a specific subnet will not depend on the global Internet connectivity to get to a local destination outside AMPRnet. The idea is to keep local traffic local. The challenge is still to get all AMPRnet subnets connected iternally, intradomain. But isn't that exactly the challenge that we want to keep? To create a global ham network in parallel, but peering, with Internet based on radio links? It will most likely be easier to set up local islands than getting global internal connectivity, but that is already the case. The challenge is somewhat more manageable if we can control the routing policies and all intermediate nodes. We can use dedicated terrestrial wireless links at different amateur frequencies, amateur satellites or maybe even some dedicated wired stretches (god forbid :-) if nothing else is available. On stretches where we by no means can come up with a dedicated link, we can still tunnel.... The internal intradomain routing can be set up statically or using an intradomain routing protocol such as OSPF in each AMPRnet island and, if needed, export routes between islands using iBGP as opposed to the eBGP functionality used in Interdomain routing. Regarding how we are going to pay for this, I would leave that to local agreements about peering and transit. I do not know exactly what agreement is currently into effect regarding the connection between AMPRnet and CENIC, but I have good hopes that we can come up with an ethics and acceptable use policy that would be acceptable for the Swedish University network to accept peering and maybe even transit of AMPRnet, at least if the transit comes via a member university taking care of the policing. The cost would in that case most likely already be covered by the university membership fees to Sunet. The extra cost induced would be very marginal and, depending on the AUP, the purpose would already be supported. This remains to be discussed if we enter this route though. A local ham club or individual without any contacts with a research or higher education institution could go via their commercial ISP or check if there is a local Internet Exchange Point where AMPRnet would be welcome to connect, and cover the costs, if any, themselves. Those that cannot find an affordable agreement can still tunnel to Internet via their more fortunate colleagues... In my mind, an important internal challenge for AMPRNET is how to avoid the fragmentation of the AMPRNET address space that would result from allowing address allocations that are used only for Internet contact without any ambition to connect internally. In such cases I have a hard time seeing the reason to use AMPRnet addresses at all. A way to meet that challenge could be to require motivations for using AMPRnet addresses, require progress reports and make all allocations time limited, and I guess that the coordination of that should be part of a delegation agreement to be signed from the AMPRnet root and down the delegation tree. Bjorn On 2012-03-21 03:49, Lin Holcomb wrote:

Don, my response is in-line below On 06/08/2012 05:45 AM, Don Fanning wrote: I obviously did not meant link level-local. Call it regional then. What I meant was that the idea is not to have to go around the world to one peering point and then tunnel back through a fragmented AMPRnet if that limits the application you would like to explore. There are Ham satellites, so why not long haul ham fiber? I have access to free capacity up to 1Gbps for strictly non-commercial use between Sweden and Latvia if anyone would be interested. If you want commercial solutions, why use the 44/8 space? What I oppose is making 44/8 commercial since the risk is that the space is lost. But why not use Internet then if it is just a money-problem.?

On 06/08/2012 09:50 AM, Don Fanning wrote: Yes, there is more than one reason to have a finer mesh. No, I would definitely not decline, I would be happy to accept, as long as it is free for non-commercial use. I actually advocated for this solution earlier this year in this discussion. That is why I am strongly advocating looking at the Acceptable Use Policies of the global research and education networks, to combine them with the IARU and national ham rule book. Well, What is expensive is the civil works involved, so you need to share right of way and ducts/poles. I I am right now invoved in building 16 km metropolitan fibre rings in Somalia, starting with Hargeisa, using students and faculty members of Somalian universities, members of SomaliREN. Don, Fibre is not that expensive You can buy cable with six fiber cores for less than a USD per meter. If you only need one fibre pair. you can trade the rest in return for right of way and ducts or a permission to use someone's poles. Regarding active equipment you can buy 1GE SFPs at ~20 USD, multiple SFP-port NICs and motherboards at ~300USD, . The capex of a complete router with 6GE ports capable of routing 700 kpps at 20W (12VDC powered, sun, wind or whatever) is less than 1kUSD. No, it is not the commercial actors I am after, they are perfectly respectable to me. It is rather the fact that the 44/8 space is a very unique resource and I fear that it will be hard to defend the privilege if the difference between the 44/8 space and the rest of Internet disappears, just as the right to use the amateur bands would disappear if we start using them commercially. You seem to forget that both IRPL and ECHOLINK use non-44/8 space a lot. It is possible to do that for other services as well and restrict the 44/8-space according to ham rules. Using 44/8 is not a necessary requirement for feasibility.

Hi Don, More comments inline below. On 06/08/2012 03:36 PM, Don Fanning wrote: Either I am unclear or you haven't got it. I would accept free transit from anyone, but I wouldnt trust anyone else than hams with 44/8 addresses, not even research and education networks. Free transit does not involve ham resources. Actually the fiber I am referring to can be used both underground, with or without a duct (if you have no termites eating them) and in the air (preferably above power lines to protect them from people believing it is copper inside). Submarine cables are a bit more expensive, but over distances where you can avoid active amplifiers (festoon solutions) less than ten times more. Transatantic is about 30 times more, typically 1 USD/inch. Yes, the next phase being discussed in Somalia is to interconnect the metropolitan area links. Garowe - Mogadishu is some 2500 km and few intermediate stops. The idea is to include a free fiber pair for research and education, and why not ham activities. The main challenge is not funding but what trustworthy consortium can be formed to own it. There is an economical tradeoff between deploying more fiber and use cwdm/dwdm when there is not enough fiber. cwdm is cheap. Well, it is often easier to do things that are guaranteed not ever to become commercial than things that definitely are commercial since everyone wants a piece of the pie. The main roles of regulators include to collect tax from the market and support public good aspects. The groups fall in different categories. I am certainly aware of that 44net is not regulated by IARU, but by ICANN and that IANA and regional registries may be watching us. I am under the impression, correct me if I am wrong, that the rules applying to 44net are very unclear since the allocation is unique and that it might be better to show good conduct rather than ask or misbehave. Has anyone asked what rules apply and what was in that case the answer? /Bjorn

Lin, You are definitely right. I am definitely aware of this fact but it has not come up naturally in the discussion until now. My home base is Sweden. Close to Stockholm International Airport, Arlanda. You can see my home base iGate (sa0bxi-6) at aprs.fi. I have the same challenges that you describe here and it is more or less the same in all mature markets. I do not claim that your first strategy should be to pull your own fiber in areas where there is already enough fiber available. On mature markets, it is sometimes possible to approach infrastructure owners from a non-commercial angle to get access to redundant resources, if you have a convincing case, for "time-limited" demonstrations or operations. This is why I have access to a dark fiber pair between Stockholm and Ventspils in Latvia. In 2003 we got a one year grant from the infrastructure owners of a then newly deployed submarine fiber cable between Stockholm and Ventspils in Latvia, a free dark fiber pair for a student project to demonstrate feasibility of the establishment of a 1GE link over close to 400 km in two hops below 30kEUR. In 2003 this was big news. We selected the fiber pair with the highest attenuation assuming that it would be redundant over a longer eriod. It is still commercially redundant, and we can still use it for non-commercial research and education purposes. I saw Ralph saying something similar in a message that popped up here at the same time as yours, from his producer perspective. So if AMPRNet can formulate a model for sponsoring of infrastructure, that would be great. I am still convinced, however, that the 44/8 addresses should be under ham control, separate from commercial associations that could jeopardise the conception of how it is used. Bjoorn . On 06/08/2012 05:56 PM, Lin Holcomb wrote:

On 06/08/2012 07:19 PM, Don Fanning wrote: Making money is OK and paying for service is also OK, but sometimes you can for various reasons get access to resources that you cannot pay on commercial conditions to do things that you could otherwise only dream of. I see no reason why these paradigms could coexist. Just diversity in business models. It is mostly about pooling resources and it is of course something in it for all involved, but not always money. Perhaps we do not necessarily have to take everything to the extreme of capitalism either.

Agreed. Happens all the time. Tim On Mar 16, 2012, at 4:07 PM, Antonio Querubin wrote: