Thanks Tom, I am available to help as well if there is a technical need on the portal. Perhaps we can collaborate. I am a software developer working in the commercial emergency communications space. Hopefully my allocation will be approved soon so I can get to work being a contributing part of the community. 73 Jim, KD8MTY Sent from my iPhone

Hi Brian, Thank you. The original allocation addition was the 8th. There has been some back and forth with a fair amount of time in between. I was thinking what would be helpful is if there was specific information required, it would be good to prompt for it ahead of time. In reading through these threads, it appears there can be some variance in what may be required by each coordinator. Perhaps instead of free form text block there could be a means to prompt for some of the information that would be considered qualifying fields. In my case I got asked for protocols and number of hosts as an example. Prior to that I got the question. What are you doing with it? Some time was lost by not having enough information in the original request that would provide the coordinator the information they needed. So if you flagged some additional mandatory fields that might be helpful. In your form you provide a subnet choice. Perhaps you also prompt the user for number of hosts, number of subnets and protocols if that is something that coordinators will need. When the time between messages is measured in days, getting as close to a “complete" allocation request at the outset would be a real time saver. I had further confusion in that it appeared the coordinator I was working with and sent an email to as a welcome (as suggested) that initially got a response, it appeared the domain for his email was parked per it’s webpage so I was concerned that perhaps there was a delay due to this. I sent out a message as such to the contact us page for amprnet flagging this. Perhaps it’s a non-issue as I did later get a request from the site for further information which I responded. Regards, Jim

I just checked all of the outstanding allocation requests in the portal, and with the exception of Finland and Italy, the volunteer coordinators seem to be on top of things. There are 17 requests in the queue; 4 for Italy, 5 for Finland, and 5 that are datestamped today. The remaining 3 are more than a week old. I believe that a week at most should be our goal. As always, specific complaints about coordination may be sent to me for resolution. - Brian

Thanks Tom. The portal already automatically sends reminder notices to coordinators with outstanding allocation requests, twice a month. If all the coordinators agree, we could change that to weekly. I find that the coordinations which take more than a few minutes to handle are those where the requester is confused and asking for something that is not sensible, so an email exchange is necessary to get the request straightened out. And it takes time to verify that the requester has supplied a valid callsign that matches his name. You might be surprised at how many folks just want a block of addresses and make up a callsign to try to get some. We've even had cases where the person registered a friend of his who is a ham but who has no interest in AMPRNet; they just were stealing his identity to get a block of addresses. And there are the BGP announced allocations, which require them to fill in an additional form by email. (It's at this point that I often find out that the person has no idea what BGP is and just checked the box out of whim, or hasn't asked his ISP if they'll announce a block for him, etc.) As for me granting coordinations, for historical reasons, each coordinator may have his own way of allocating subnets. Since I can't know all those schemes, it's not practical for me to just take a stab at it. This is a volunteer organization, and people devote their time to it as their schedule permits. I think the great majority of the volunteer coordinators are doing a good job, and I don't think the system is broken. When a coordinator seems to be unresponsive, I contact them to ask if I can help. On these rare occasions, the allocation request just slipped into a crack and a simple reminder is all that's necessary. If they don't respond, I find another coordinator by looking for volunteers. - Brian On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 02:08:58PM -0800, Tom Hayward wrote:

On 20/02/2017 7:27 AM, Tom Hayward wrote: I did have to wait a few weeks for my block, but that was only because the coordinator here happened to be away on vacation at the time - just a case of bad timing on my part. Once they were back on deck, my request was dealt with promptly. The second problem didn't arise either, I was allocated a /24. Still working towards putting it to air in my local area. Obviously this is a region/area specific issue. -- 73 de Tony VK3JED/VK3IRL http://vkradio.com

Also review http://hamwan.org On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Bill Vodall <wa7nwp(a)gmail.com> wrote: > (Please trim inclusions from previous messages) > _______________________________________________ > You can watch the video of the talk at the Ham Radio Now website. > > Bill > > > On Feb 19, 2017 2:04 AM, "F6CNB" <f6cnb(a)hutin.org> wrote: > > (Please trim inclusions from previous messages) > _______________________________________________ > Jim, > > > > For the european activity, you should read the Jann DG8NGN paper presented > at the DCC 2014 in Austin, TX. > > > > http://tapr.org/pdf/DCC2014-TheEuropeanHAMNET-DG8NGN.pdf > > > > 73 Remi F6CNB/AG5IR > > > >