I have been floating in and of this news group for about 12-15 years...
Sometimes I have been an active poster and other times I am content to just
lurk.

What amazes me is really two things that have a very close connection (no
pun intended):

1) The amount of useful and meaningful traffic in the digital modes has
dropped dramatically.

2) The amount of useful and meaningful traffic on this news group has
dropped dramatically.

Yes, there are a few APRS nodes and some traffic there... A node simply
repeating ad infinitum where it is located, what time it is, and what the
temperature is at the site. Not very useful, but it is better than dead air,
I suppose.

While it really does not fit the definition of digital radio 100%, of much
more interest are the EchoLink system and similar ideas. At least there is a
combining of digital services (VoIP) and radio happening.

And yes, there are a few pockets of digital services that are surviving,
perhaps even thriving. But this is not the norm... Just look at the traffic
in this news group or check your local BBS (if you have one) and, if you
have been around for more than about 10 years or so, you will see the
overall decline.

I am curious as to what people attribute the (apparent) death of digital
systems overall.

I, of course, have my own ideas that have, by the way, not changed for more
than a decade.

So, what say you about the life of digital services?

Take Care & 73

From The Desk Of
Marty Albert
KC6UFM

Marty Albert wrote:

I am curious as to what people attribute the (apparent) death of digital
systems overall.

I, of course, have my own ideas that have, by the way, not changed for more
than a decade.

So, what say you about the life of digital services?

The death of the digital modes is directly attributible to the fact that
the protocol is 20 years old and has throughput equal to the speed of an
old lady sitting in a motorized wheelchair trying to check-out her
groceries in the express isle.

TAPR had a great spread-spectrum board, but the project died a death due
to a thousand cuts of various sorts. Until amateur radio gets a similar
project that makes speeds 384 kbps and in a form that makes it easy
for appliance operators to plug-n-play, packet is all we have.

I'm surprised the ARRL hasn't sponsored a project. Kids playing with
802.11 are having far more success in building networks that amateur
radio operators.

You are correct on the speed issue... Until we can megabit+ speeds that are
easy enough for the appliance operators to use, we will likely see little
growth.

But as you point out, there has been little development or growth in the
past 20 or so years... The interest was gone long before the "typical" ham
was an appliance operator. It seems to me that, in about the same time
frame, perhaps +5 years, there was a rather vocal minority that were
anti-digital that drove many folks away from the modes, people who had the
knowledge and skills to make high speed systems work...

In about 1989 there was a local ham (now SK named Frank whose last name and
call I can not remember now) who came to me with a design for a device that
would plug into a 100BaseT NIC and generate low power (about 50 mW as I
recall) at either 70 cm or 23 cm. He wanted my input on the protocol stack
(networking is my thing). Effectively, the device simply sent and received
TCP/IP over an RF Ethernet link. He had built a pair of prototypes that
worked very well. He then built a simple amplifier to get the RF up to about
10 watts and it worked very well between his house and mine, about 8 miles
apart, on J-Poles. We were able to get about 80 Mbps at 23 cm.

He was then attacked by a few of the vocal minority fussing about their
opinion that anything faster than 56 Kbps was not for "real hams" and he
scraped the project rather than put up with heat from these folks.

I wish that I still had the schematic for the prototype that he gave me, but
over the course 15+ years and 3 cross-country moves, I have misplaced them.
It would need significant updating... The prototypes were xtal controlled
and did not use SS. I would think (I am a network engineer, not RF or
electronics!) that the system could benefit from DDS, DSP, and SS
procedures.

I suspect that a team of RF, electronics, and network experts could probably
reproduce the device, given the motivation and if left alone by (or were to
simply ignore) the doom-sayers. And, I would wager, that the team could come
up with improvements that would let get even closer to 100 Mbps, if not
faster, when used on a 1000BaseT NIC.

I further suspect that if such a device could be designed, built, tested,
and then given to one (or more) of the several manufacturers that they would
sell like hotcakes, again assuming that something could be done about the
doom-sayers.

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


"Jayson Davis" wrote in message
...
Marty Albert wrote:

I am curious as to what people attribute the (apparent) death of digital
systems overall.

I, of course, have my own ideas that have, by the way, not changed for
more
than a decade.

So, what say you about the life of digital services?

The death of the digital modes is directly attributible to the fact that
the protocol is 20 years old and has throughput equal to the speed of an
old lady sitting in a motorized wheelchair trying to check-out her
groceries in the express isle.

TAPR had a great spread-spectrum board, but the project died a death due
to a thousand cuts of various sorts. Until amateur radio gets a similar
project that makes speeds 384 kbps and in a form that makes it easy
for appliance operators to plug-n-play, packet is all we have.

I'm surprised the ARRL hasn't sponsored a project. Kids playing with
802.11 are having far more success in building networks that amateur
radio operators.

The single biggest drawback that US digital hams face is TAPR.

The second largest drawback US digital hams face is the ARRL.

Between the two, they have managed to keep the US somewhere between fifteen
to twenty years behind the rest of the world.

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" wrote in message
. ..
The single biggest drawback that US digital hams face is TAPR.

The second largest drawback US digital hams face is the ARRL.

Between the two, they have managed to keep the US somewhere between
fifteen
to twenty years behind the rest of the world.

Charles Brabham, N5PVL


There is nothing stopping the hams from changing it except for lack of
money. Too many people come up with these grandiose ideas and expect
somebody to fund it. Well it isn't going to happen. Many clubs are
struggling just to keep their repeaters funded and maintained.
Individuals face dilemmas of their own on how to allocate their financial
priorities.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

Yep... Who will pay for it?

The gizmo that Frank designed (16+ years ago) could be built for about
$25.00 (USD) buying the parts retail. I would suspect that, at that time, a
manufacturer going all out in building and selling these things could have
got all the parts for around $4.00 or so. With a redesign to take advantage
of today's DDS, DSP, SS, uControllers, etc., I would suspect that
manufacturer, buying in lots to build 5000 units, would probably pay about
$6.00 for the parts and perhaps another $8.00 in labor. That would put their
wholesale price to dealers at about $40.00 and retail price at about
$80-$100.

You'll pay that for a 1200 bps TNC!

But, actual prices aside, we hams need to start doing some innovative and
interesting things that private industry can pick up on and make a few
dollars. Want to get really bad news? Go to the FCC site and take a look at
what bands the size of, for example, our 70 cm band are selling for at
auction. Hams in the US are probably sitting on a couple of billion dollars
worth of bandwidth.

How long do you think it will be before some congress critter notices that
hams, (A) Ham a lot of valuable bandwidth, (B) Have not contributed very
much to the electronics or radio industries since the early 1950's, (C) Are
shrinking in numbers and spend most of their time acting just like CBer's,
and (D) Are basically a moot point when it comes to emergency
communications.

In other words, the people that really like ham radio will come up with the
money because it matters to them if it goes away.

And, BTW, there were the same arguments about money when we had a lot of
privately owned BBSs for computer users to call into.

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




"Dee Flint" wrote in message
...

There is nothing stopping the hams from changing it except for lack of
money. Too many people come up with these grandiose ideas and expect
somebody to fund it. Well it isn't going to happen. Many clubs are
struggling just to keep their repeaters funded and maintained.
Individuals face dilemmas of their own on how to allocate their financial
priorities.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

Up to a point, I think that you are correct, but there far more dynamic
forces acting on this than just the ARRL and TAPR. (a side note: I gave up
membership in both about 1991)

Take Care & 73

--
From The Desk Of
Marty Albert, KC6UFM




"Charles Brabham" wrote in message
. ..
The single biggest drawback that US digital hams face is TAPR.

The second largest drawback US digital hams face is the ARRL.

Between the two, they have managed to keep the US somewhere between
fifteen
to twenty years behind the rest of the world.

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

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
beacon on the air, and I use the local packet infrastructure. I edit my
club's newsletter, and write a monthly column about digital topics.
There is a small but active group of packet enthusiasts in the region
that keep the nodes running, but all the same I've seen a node and a
full-service BBS go dark in the last year or so.

One reason for digital's decline from my point of view is a lack of
interest. Obviously if the choice is reading bulletins at 1200 baud vs.
DSL or even fast dialup, most folks will go with the more attractive
alternative. It's too bad though that we as amateurs don't have a
viable nationwide digital network. I've given the topic a lot of
thought, and locally I'm trying to stir up interest in APRS since its
the 'hottest' digital application we currently have that is available
to most hams cheaply.

From an emergency communications perspective, we could potentially make
a better case for our existence if we had a national network that was
100% independent of the wired public infrastrucure (including the
Internet). Now, the ARRL is pushing Winlink 2000. I sat through a forum
on the topic two or three years ago at the Timonium, MD hamfest. I know
about the controversy surrounding it, but at least it provides a way to
pass email traffic via the client programs that people are accustomed
to using.

Besides lack of interest, there is always the cost factor. I don't know
what it costs to operate a typical node, but for a hobby it must be
expensive. Its obviously a labor of love for the sysops out there,
given the small amount of traffic and small number of users. A local
node/BBS seems to have gone out of service. It was a TCP/IP and AX.25
board, as well as an Internet gateway node. Maybe the connectivity
costs got to be too much, I don't know. Without users, even the most
dedicated packet sysop must eventually question the reason for
maintaining his or her system. I also understand that tower space is
getting more difficult to obtain and hold onto.

I think establishing high-speed backbones on a regional basis, using
802.11 technology under Part 97 rules, or maybe the Icom D-Star system,
would be useful. The problem there is cost and the tremendous effort
that would be involved. In theory, a group of clubs with repeaters that
have line-of-sight could get together and build a backbone linking
those repeater sites. Now I'm talking TCP/IP, so there is another
problem. I'm interested in doing amateur TCP/IP, but when I emailed my
regional Amprnet coordinator for an IP address, I received zero
response.

Imagine the value the ham community could offer if we had networks
ringing the major cities. I don't believe we need to recreate the
Internet or try to compete with anything that exists currently. But to
support emergency services effectively with a robust network would
really go a long way to justifying our continued existence.

Matt, N3SOZ











Marty Albert wrote:
I have been floating in and of this news group for about 12-15
years...
Sometimes I have been an active poster and other times I am content
to just
lurk.

What amazes me is really two things that have a very close connection
(no
pun intended):

1) The amount of useful and meaningful traffic in the digital
modes has
dropped dramatically.

2) The amount of useful and meaningful traffic on this news group
has
dropped dramatically.

Yes, there are a few APRS nodes and some traffic there... A node
simply
repeating ad infinitum where it is located, what time it is, and what
the
temperature is at the site. Not very useful, but it is better than
dead air,
I suppose.

While it really does not fit the definition of digital radio 100%, of
much
more interest are the EchoLink system and similar ideas. At least
there is a
combining of digital services (VoIP) and radio happening.

And yes, there are a few pockets of digital services that are
surviving,
perhaps even thriving. But this is not the norm... Just look at the
traffic
in this news group or check your local BBS (if you have one) and, if
you
have been around for more than about 10 years or so, you will see the
overall decline.

I am curious as to what people attribute the (apparent) death of
digital
systems overall.

I, of course, have my own ideas that have, by the way, not changed
for more
than a decade.

So, what say you about the life of digital services?

Take Care & 73

From The Desk Of
Marty Albert
KC6UFM

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

Imagine the value the ham community could offer if we had networks
ringing the major cities. I don't believe we need to recreate the
Internet or try to compete with anything that exists currently. But to
support emergency services effectively with a robust network would
really go a long way to justifying our continued existence.

Matt, N3SOZ

Exactly what we are doing here in Portland, OR.
Lots of fun.

--

... Hank

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

You are 100% correct... Lack of interest is, in my opinion, the largest
single factor.

The speed is also a big deal, as you say... 1200 bps vs. a 2-4 Mbps cable
connection seems to be a slam dunk.

But, keep in mind that we are talking about is an easy to build and use
device that, with a 15+ year old design, was known to 80 Mbps over a fairly
short path.

That sort of makes mucking about with 802.11 junk sort of a wasted effort.

The mistake was made about 15 years ago when the drive was to effectively
duplicate the Internet on the ham bands. Simply put, there are not, never
have been, and likely never will be enough hams in the world to do that.
Besides, why try to duplicate a defective system?

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