Subj : Re: Packet Radio
To   : Avon
From : tenser
Date : Sun Jan 24 2021 15:05:56

On 21 Jan 2021 at 07:35p, Avon pondered and said...
 
 Av> On 20 Jan 2021 at 03:10p, deon pondered and said...
 Av>  
 Av>  de> I would love to get data flowing over the air - with no ongoing costs
 Av>  de> a 3rd party, even if it was a slow speed. Building out (or optimising
 Av>  de> protocol to support this slow speed would be fun...
 Av> 
 Av> I too would like to do this. I'm hot on building communications
 Av> resiliency and I like the idea of a ascii BBS running contemporary bbs
 Av> software available to folks to access over RF.
 Av> 
 Av> I've not really played with the older 'built by hams for packet radio
 Av> bbs' software but from what I've seen I'm not sure I would really like
 Av> it.
 Av> 
 Av> My ideal would be (as part of a wider plan of communications resilience)
 Av> to have bbs FTN running over RF packet as a wider option for people to
 Av> connect should TCP/IP over 'mainstream' internet channels be taken down
 Av> due to act of god or man etc..

I think people make a bit of a mistake here by throwing
the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.  The Internet
was _designed_ for resiliency; it's not like the phone
company that had to engineer in massive redundancies and
controls because it was centralized; by design it's
decentralized and packet routing allows one to get around
broken links etc.

I can understand the desire for communications infrastructure
that doesn't rely on commercial providers: the providers
themselves can fail, and if that's the only provider, then
redundancy at the protocol level is just a distinction
without a difference.

But the solution here isn't to revert to ancient technology
(AX.25 and packet BBSes) but rather to build something
better that provides IP routing on top of autonomous,
redundant RF links.  AMPRNet is a step in the right direction;
things like AREDN and Hamwan are existence proofs to emulate.
The next step is a framing format for putting IPv6 datagrams
directly on the air and doing something with globally
routable IP spaces.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Windows/32)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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