Hi All, I am, 75 years of age and not quite senile in spite of some comments on this thread and have lots of nice ham type toys running on non 44 net services, I would love to run them on ham only 44 net but it's made just to dam hard With the real world networks I can buy a router / modem set up a few minor parameters and hey presto I can run my own networks (2 of around my place) and have mail servers, web sites, ntp servers, ip cams, irlp, aprs igate, jnos, an fbb bbs, BPQ and packet radio all running reasonably easy. Much of this stuff is running on raspberry pi computers but some is running on linux boxes and some (gasp horror) on windows boxes. Lots of it is connected to ham radio transceivers for other ham access to my systems. About a year ago I decided it was high time I looked into the 44 net because some of the raspberry pi distros I was reviewing had 44 net access hard wired into the code for the various ham functions. I joined this mail list and also applied through the portal for an address allocation. Well I am still waiting for an allocation and am becoming more convinced that even if I had one I couldn't use it suitable and I will have to basically replace it with another. This would be a real pain because I like my current modem/router which has heaps of nice facilities built in for traffic flow measurements and a very comprehensive and easily controllable port forwarding and redirection ability. It also has an inbuilt DECT base station, amongst lots of other things. But to join 44 net I have to turf this out, flash an old modem with (unsupported) software and lose most of the facilities that I, as a non professional user of data services want in my network. Or so it seems to me at the moment. Why not look at making it easier for people like me. All I want is use of the 44 address range to quickly and simply link with other fellow hams in a _hobby_ environment, not spending my days acting as a wannabe professional communications engineer (even though a few years ago I was one). When I was setting up my various toys there were comprehensive and simple, understandable, instructions available for making them both secure and operational. This is not the case with amprnet from what I see by reading here. I don't mind learning new things, in fact I revel in it, but if you want to expand the user base there does need to be a beginners guide or at least an accessible "dummys guide for amprnet" for people like me whose learning is either a bit dated, or based on other non data fields of endeavour. Remember ham radio is a hobby not a career. The system also needs to be more compatible with off the shelf existing hardware. I get quite frustrated with the situation because I have a raspberry pi sitting on my work bench here with its jnos software pleading with me to tell it my 44 address and another running a nice piece of software running a combined aprs/ fbb/dx server distro also asking for my 44 address. At the moment they are just unusable curiosities because of the "missing link" All I really want to do is share use of the toys I have built on air with other hams and provide a continuing service to my long term digital over ham radio mates. Whilst contrary to what others have said on this thread, data services are not that cheap in Australia, I do have the use of 150Gbytes a month and my other usage is such that I can and do share a fair bit of this with over the air ham services. Now I bow down before the amprnet gurus and worship them from afar, but please don't forget the end user like me who just wants a simple allocation that can be used just like Iike I use my real world static I.P. , that is set and forget. If you satisfied a need like that then I am sure many more hams would participate in the valuable and amazing resource of the 44 net . It can't be just a coincidence that my spell checker wants to replace the word amprnet with amphetamine considering that the effect both words have is similar to the end user.. I will now standby and await enlightenment from on high.......... Tony VK3API Newbie to Amprnet 50 years in digital ham radio .