Baslinux mailing list

[Lee Forrest <lforrestster AT gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 01:52:56PM -0600, S. Porter wrote:
> James Miller wrote:
> > 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?)
> 
> [lurkmode off]

:-)

> OK, you flushed me out!  There are several ham radio HSMM (high speed 
> multimedia) groups, but their focus is exactly that...reproducing a network 
> that will deliver multimedia rather than a minimalistic approach.  For more 
> info, see http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/high-speed-digital/
> and  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_speed_multimedia.
> 
> While this is going in the opposite direction, the basic operation and 
> hardware is the same.

Thanks.

> 
> >> 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. 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 :)
> 
> On HF, 300 baud is the max allowed for packet radio, 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/baud

Not easy to grasp. What would that be in bytes/second? Different for 
80-40-20-15?

> except for 10m. Current wireless at 2.4 GHz is partially within
> the ham allocation, and, in fact, a group of students/hams
> from Ohio set the world record for 802.11 using off-the-shelf
> (sorta) components. I won't get into the details (see
> http://www.wifi-shootout.com/index.html), but they used large
> dishes and began with amps inline (legal by hams within their
> allocation) and after the link was established, removed the
> amps.

At that frequency it's basically line-of-sight. And if you can
do line-of-sight with a tight beam, you can use any frequency
you want, practically speaking.

> Hams have been networking over long distances for decades
> on the microwave bands. Why it hasn't gained widespread
> popularity is beyond me.

The corporations don't like that kind of freedom and don't
like amateur, and everyone works for or is invested in those
corporations, directly or indirectly, and dependent upon the
goods and services they provide.

The only reason the amateurs get the bands they do is that they
are so innovative and often come up with solutions and ideas
that no engineers or academics could. And they do all the grunt
work.

Those bands are worth, literally, vast fortunes.

> >> Specifically, can you do packet radio using SSB on the High
> >> Frequency bands? That would be a must to make it work.
>
> As I stated above, FCC regs prohibit data rates exceeding 300
> baud on most HF bands, 1200 baud on 10m. It's a bandwidth
> thing. Here in Arkansas, we have a 1200 baud packet network on
> 2m with a 9k6 backbone on 6m. 9k6 is used a bit on 70cm, but
> not much. Current technology can support 56k, but again, for
> some reason it hasn't caught on.

Looking like you can't get close to 1KB/s on the lower HF bands.

That's a shame. Although compression would help.

> To get back on topic, BL would be a wonderful tool for use
> in such a networking environment. There are a couple of
> ham-oriented distros, which, to me, are natural for each other
> (linux and ham radio, that is). JNOS was the DOS equivalent to
> BL for packet TCP/IP, but linux is much better suited for a
> variety of reasons.

Unix was designed for networking. Dos was designed to play games.

> >> 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.
>
> I'm a fellow qrper as well. :-)
>
> 73, Steve

#     ..._._

Lee

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BasicLinux: Small is Beautiful
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