Baslinux mailing list

[Lee Forrest <lforrestster AT gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 01:14:31PM -0600, James Miller wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 07:57:15PM +0000, Lee Forrest wrote:
> > 
> > Aha! Another Evil Genius 8-) after my own heart! I used to be a ham, but 
> > did mostly CW
> > (radio telegraphy/Morse code for the non-hams) and SSB (a type of voice 
> > transmission
> > related to AM) on the High Frequency bands (3-30 Mhz; you 'bounce' the 
> > signals off
> > of the ionosphere so you don't need repeaters to communicate around the 
> > globe).
> > 
> > _That's_ how you break free of the ISPs, isn't it?
> 
> You heard it here first, folks: creation of the "alternet," courtesy of Lee 
> Forrest and 
> James Miller :) (actually, I haven't looked: is anyone else trying 
> to/talking about doing 
> something like this?)

Don't know, but I like the name.

> > Never did packet radio, and don't remember the questions from
> > the General exam (an intermediate ham rating).
>
> You're alot farther along than me on this one, my friend. I've
> never touched a ham radio, let alone taken any test. I knew
> people who were into it as I was growing up, but somehow never
> got involved in it myself. But I've tried to dream up ways of
> making the internet more like it was 10 - 15 years ago (in the
> good ways; less spam, advertising, and malicious activity)
> and this sort of scenario seemed to offer some promise. I did
> a bit of reading on packet radio and discussed it a little
> with a fellow who joined the list briefly a few years ago and
> was heavily involved in packet radio (JP, creator of Drinou
> Linux--anyone remember him? The discussion was off-list, btw,
> so there won't be any info on this in the archive). He was in
> France where they have stricter limits than here in the US.
>
> > Is it restricted to certain bands or sub-bands or emission
> > types? How much bandwidth is required to get, say,
> > 1KB/second? (I normally get an average of 1.3 on my dialup
> > connection.)
>
> Dunno about that. JP seemed to be saying his speeds on packet
> radio were in the range of 56K modems, due to restrictions in
> Europe.

That's just _fine_. 

> He said things were different in the US, indicating that
> higher data transfer speeds would be possible. It was a pretty
> brief discussion and I'm not sure I'm recalling accurately
> what he said. And my understanding of the technical issues
> is really like what Greg Mayman has been saying about his
> understanding of Linux: I barely know enough to even ask
> meaningful questions. Sorry, but what you're seeing here is
> alot of dreaming unfettered by the harsh realities of reality
> :)

I'll look into it, having just enough background to make the
search fairly efficient. Wish I hadn't let my license expire.

> > Specifically, can you do packet radio using SSB on the High
> > Frequency bands? That would be a must to make it work.
> >
> > Of course, you can't do commerce via amateur radio, which is
> > not something I would exclude. I'd just make the merchants
> > use ".com" names and obey the same rules as everyone else
> > regarding file types and protocols and such.
> >
> > The good news in this area is that you don't any longer have
> > to learn Morse code to get a ham license.
> >
> > Although personally I think it is pretty neat. The original
> > digital communications network. _Very_ simple technology. I
> > had a little transceiver that would fit in my pocket (made it
> > myself), along with a small battery pack and wire antenna,
> > and could communicate all around the world on about 3-1/2
> > watts of power.
>
> Sounds like great stuff. I don't know how much my first career
> (teaching) is going to allow me to participate in second career
> projects like this: heck, I have a hard time finding time to
> admin my Linux systems and tend to my herd of aging computers

Hope you got plenty of fodder in for the winter :-\

> (actually, it's probably about time to send a few of them
> along to the great computer beyond)! 

Do you bury them or burn them?

> For a minute there, when I saw a response to this thread from
> Anthony Albert, I thought to myself: "hey, right there we have
> the beginnings of a nationwide alternet; Lee on the west coast,
> me and Sindi in the midwest, and Anthony way up there in the
> northeast!" Anyways, a fella can dream, can't he? :)

That woud be a good start.

I can't make any commitment until I've looked into it, but
theoretically it isn't any different than wifi: Your computer is
connected to a transceiver that has an antenna. Be more power
involved, but nothing excessive. The antennas would be larger,
but can be made from wire and concealed from neighbors and
landlords.

The thing about the High Frequency bands is that you use
different ones for the same distances depending on the time of
day, season, and solar cycle.

Very few stations would be up all the time, so you'd have to make
sure that there were enough up at any one time for the net to
be complete. The servers would have to be mirrored (a good idea
anyway). Something like UUCP could be necessary. Might turn out
that Anthony's gopher concept is on the right track.

And for radio connections, a good firewall is a must.

You could strip the kernel and OS down to a fraction of its
present size. I'm thinking minix, as an example. Maybe the very
earliest of UNIX implementations. A 386 would work just fine. 

Lee

-- 
BasicLinux: Small is Beautiful
http://www.basiclinux.com.ru