Marty,

Yes I am drooling over the possibility. Like you I can imagine these
fantastic star networks ringing the big metro areas. I think though
that to be feasible the community needs to look at whats available
off-the-shelf. Obviously if someone technically brilliant can take
Frank's idea and build something that can be cheaply manufactured, that
would be ideal. But Icom's D-Star system is available, and hams are
using 802.11 access points with amplifiers and directional antennas
(www.arrl.org/hsmm/). Maybe a club somewhere has a network like this
already running. It would take a dedicated group of hams with some
fairly serious resources (capital, access to good sites, know-how) to
pull something like this off.

In my area a small group of ATV guys have put up a repeater, and have
established several sites at EOC's, with the goal of providing ATV
"on-demand" to emergency officials. A network project could piggyback
on something like that.

Matt, N3SOZ



Marty Albert wrote:

For the life of me, I can see no reason why Frank's device could not
be
re-designed today to well over 512 Mbps, perhaps very close to
gigabit
speeds. If you make the jump to the new copper solutions for 10 Gbps,
we may
even be able to get close to that...

Imagine a large metropolitan area, like maybe Dallas/Fort Worth,
ringed by
an 8 Gbps nodes with spokes at 8 Gbps "dropping" into and through the
city.
A series of 1 Gbps nodes come off of the spokes to feed into the
neighborhood. In the neighborhoods, picture a bridge node that users
can
connect to at, say, 100 Mbps. Lastly, picture these "City Wheels"
being
connected to other city wheels at 10 Gbps.

Are you drooling yet?

Take Care & 73
--
From The Desk Of
Marty Albert, KC6UFM



"n3soz" wrote in message
oups.com...
I've been a ham for almost eleven years. The year I got started
(1994)
was the same year the Web became open to commercial traffic, and I
guess the decline of packet began around that time. I keep an APRS
snipped for space's sake

"n3soz" wrote in message
oups.com...
Marty,

Yes I am drooling over the possibility. Like you I can imagine these
fantastic star networks ringing the big metro areas. I think though

So do it!
WiFi gear getting cheap, run it within the ham band.
Works fine.

that to be feasible the community needs to look at whats available
off-the-shelf. Obviously if someone technically brilliant can take
Frank's idea and build something that can be cheaply manufactured, that
would be ideal. But Icom's D-Star system is available, and hams are
using 802.11 access points with amplifiers and directional antennas
(www.arrl.org/hsmm/). Maybe a club somewhere has a network like this
already running. It would take a dedicated group of hams with some
fairly serious resources (capital, access to good sites, know-how) to
pull something like this off.

In my area a small group of ATV guys have put up a repeater, and have
established several sites at EOC's, with the goal of providing ATV
"on-demand" to emergency officials. A network project could piggyback
on something like that.

Matt, N3SOZ



Marty Albert wrote:

For the life of me, I can see no reason why Frank's device could not
be
re-designed today to well over 512 Mbps, perhaps very close to
gigabit
speeds. If you make the jump to the new copper solutions for 10 Gbps,
we may
even be able to get close to that...

Imagine a large metropolitan area, like maybe Dallas/Fort Worth,
ringed by
an 8 Gbps nodes with spokes at 8 Gbps "dropping" into and through the
city.
A series of 1 Gbps nodes come off of the spokes to feed into the
neighborhood. In the neighborhoods, picture a bridge node that users
can
connect to at, say, 100 Mbps. Lastly, picture these "City Wheels"
being
connected to other city wheels at 10 Gbps.

Are you drooling yet?



--

... Hank

http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli

In message et, Hank
Oredson writes

So do it!
WiFi gear getting cheap, run it within the ham band.
Works fine.


Hank (or anyone else),

Can you point me to reflectors/forums for WiFi ham band networks? I
would like to catch up with what people are doing in this area.

73
Ian, G3NRW

"news" wrote in message
...
In message et, Hank
Oredson writes

So do it!
WiFi gear getting cheap, run it within the ham band.
Works fine.


Hank (or anyone else),

Can you point me to reflectors/forums for WiFi ham band networks? I would
like to catch up with what people are doing in this area.


You just hook it up ... totally simple.
Might want an amplifier and good antenna.
Took me about 3 minutes to get a WiFi link running here.
It was between two packet BBS nodes (running SNOS)
and two Windows machines. "It just works."

--

... Hank

http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli

In message . net, Hank
Oredson writes

You just hook it up ... totally simple.
Might want an amplifier and good antenna.
Took me about 3 minutes to get a WiFi link running here.
It was between two packet BBS nodes (running SNOS)
and two Windows machines. "It just works."


Yup, I can see that, but it's the "amplifier and good antenna" bit that
I'm particularly interested in. What do people use? URLs?

73
Ian, G3NRW

"news" wrote in message
...
In message . net, Hank
Oredson writes

You just hook it up ... totally simple.
Might want an amplifier and good antenna.
Took me about 3 minutes to get a WiFi link running here.
It was between two packet BBS nodes (running SNOS)
and two Windows machines. "It just works."


Yup, I can see that, but it's the "amplifier and good antenna" bit that
I'm particularly interested in. What do people use? URLs?


It's a long topic.
There are many many options.
Use Google.

--

... Hank

http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli

"news" wrote in message
...


Can you point me to reflectors/forums for WiFi ham band networks? I would
like to catch up with what people are doing in this area.

I can give an overview of what's being accomplished in this area...

Summary: Lots of hot air, accompanied by little or no action.

As far as I can tell, nobody has utilized the WIFI/SHF stuff in a
substantial way. There are lots of "mini-networks" here and there, but I
have yet to hear about anything of an established, permanent nature that
"rings a metroplolis" or even a small town. Another common networking task
that has gone unreported is linking packet nets in two cities via WIFI/SHF
links. Nobody has stepped forward to even claim to have accomplished that
basic task.

The ARRL HSMM group has been around for years and years now - but there is
no substantial WIFI/SHF amateur radio network - anywhere - to show for it.

The same applies to the dozens of WIFI/SHF reflectors and forums that have
popped up over the last decade.

Lots of speculation and nit-picking technical arguement - but no usable
network. ( On any substantial scale. )

There is really no particular reason why these things could not be done. It
is all well within the realm of possibility, but for some reason there has
been no particular effort to utilize WIFI/SHF equipment for these basic
networking applications, except on a small, local scale. I've noted that
even the small LANs that pop up from time to time utilizing WIFI/SHF gear
seldom stay in operation for very long.

Why? - My explanation for this is that the same amateurs who tend to be
interested in WIFI also tend to disparage the idea of established amateur
radio digital networking. - They all appear to believe that we would be a
lot better off to just use the Internet instead of building independent
amateur radio infrastructure. - So they don't do it.

Charles Brabham, N5PVL

Director: USPacket http://www.uspacket.org
Admin: HamBlog.Com http://www.hamblog.com
Webmaster: HamPoll.Com http://www.hampoll.com
Weblog: http://www.hamblog.com/blog_n5pvl.php

"Charles Brabham" writes:
Why? - My explanation for this is that the same amateurs who tend to be
interested in WIFI also tend to disparage the idea of established amateur
radio digital networking. - They all appear to believe that we would be a
lot better off to just use the Internet instead of building independent
amateur radio infrastructure. - So they don't do it.

It could also be that they're more interested in low-speed DX networks
than local wifi-like networks. Wifi works perfectly well on part 15
with no licenses needed. Why bother with a licensed version of the
same thing? And how do you re-tune the wifi cards to ham bands anyway?

"Paul Rubin" wrote in message
...
"Charles Brabham" writes:
Why? - My explanation for this is that the same amateurs who tend to be
interested in WIFI also tend to disparage the idea of established amateur
radio digital networking. - They all appear to believe that we would be a
lot better off to just use the Internet instead of building independent
amateur radio infrastructure. - So they don't do it.

It could also be that they're more interested in low-speed DX networks
than local wifi-like networks. Wifi works perfectly well on part 15
with no licenses needed. Why bother with a licensed version of the
same thing? And how do you re-tune the wifi cards to ham bands anyway?


Hams can run more power, use larger antennas, and cover
reasonable distances. But you knew that, right?

--

... Hank

http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli

"Charles Brabham" wrote in message
m...

"news" wrote in message
...


Can you point me to reflectors/forums for WiFi ham band networks? I would
like to catch up with what people are doing in this area.

I can give an overview of what's being accomplished in this area...

Summary: Lots of hot air, accompanied by little or no action.

We have done some test links, to verify path issues.
Then we did the cost analysis.
About $2k per endpoint for the paths we need to cover.
So we have some short links, but any interesting links require
investment from a group of hams instead of a single ham.
That has not happened.

As far as I can tell, nobody has utilized the WIFI/SHF stuff in a
substantial way. There are lots of "mini-networks" here and there, but I
have yet to hear about anything of an established, permanent nature that
"rings a metroplolis" or even a small town. Another common networking task
that has gone unreported is linking packet nets in two cities via WIFI/SHF
links. Nobody has stepped forward to even claim to have accomplished that
basic task.

The problem is cost.

The ARRL HSMM group has been around for years and years now - but there is
no substantial WIFI/SHF amateur radio network - anywhere - to show for it.

The same applies to the dozens of WIFI/SHF reflectors and forums that have
popped up over the last decade.

Lots of speculation and nit-picking technical arguement - but no usable
network. ( On any substantial scale. )

The technical issues are simple to solve, they just involve money
to buy amplifiers, coax, antennas. The money issue cannot be solved.

There is really no particular reason why these things could not be done.
It is all well within the realm of possibility, but for some reason there
has been no particular effort to utilize WIFI/SHF equipment for these
basic networking applications, except on a small, local scale. I've noted
that even the small LANs that pop up from time to time utilizing WIFI/SHF
gear seldom stay in operation for very long.

It's money.

Why? - My explanation for this is that the same amateurs who tend to be
interested in WIFI also tend to disparage the idea of established amateur
radio digital networking. - They all appear to believe that we would be a
lot better off to just use the Internet instead of building independent
amateur radio infrastructure. - So they don't do it.

That has not happened here. We just don't have the money to do it.
Note that the Portland Metro area is broken up by many large
and small hills. We need at least two dozen sites to cover the
whole area. At a few $k per site we are talking total investment
greater than $50,000. We have had 9600 in place for years,
but those sites will mostly not work for WiFi. Think "wet trees".

--

... Hank

http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli