On 1/24/2013 1:58 PM, Tom Horne wrote:
Jerry

It seems I have a reel talent for being unclear in how I ask questions.
I wish that I could turn that into a job skill like the people who
right crossword puzzles but I digress. When I said Ad Hoc EOCs I was
referring to the ones in the city halls of the existing small cities in
the county. They don't have dedicated spaces for an EOC but they set
one up in a meeting or conference room when they have something serious
going down. The idea would be to set up a few wifi capable links on
taller buildings that could be linked to some central high spot and from
there to the county's purpose built EOC.

Prince Georges county ARES is looking at installing a High Speed Multi
Media Mesh (HSMM-MESHâ„¢) Net between their county's hospitals. We have
Used HSMM-Mesh at one public service event already and it worked well
there. So those of us who have already deployed it successfully in a
field deployed application were interested in seeing if it could be used
to cover these longer distances effectively. If it were possible to run
Web EOC on the links that would be sufficient. We are not trying to
restore Facebook connectivity to the people at Temporary shelter
locations but rather to put some readily predictable places in touch
with the EOC. Since that could be done with automatic control under
part 97 of the rules we would not need an operator at the served
locations.

As for testing we could put LAN routers at one or more of the nodes to
allow appropriate local use of the WAN the links would provide which
would provide the kind of continuous use and testing that you are
talking about. We would have to have a way to shut down the LAN routers
when the links were needed for emergency management support.

--
Tom W3TDH


Tom,

Yes, I understood what you meant when you talked about "ad hoc EOC's".
But why do you think they are "ad hoc"? Perhaps because they don't have
the room for an EOC - which also means they don't have room for the
equipment. That's why hams bring equipment into these ad hoc EOC's.

As for the mesh network between hospitals. You need to be careful. For
instance, NO medical information can be transmitted in the clear (HIPAA
regulations have severe penalties for doing so) - which eliminates ham
radio for transmitting this information (encryption not allowed).

As for "automatic control" - this refers to control for licensed amateur
stations. It does NOT include allowing unlicensed operators to control
ham transmitters. You will still need a control operator to key the
transmitter - which means either someone on site or someone who can
otherwise tell when the transmitter needs to be keyed.

I have to agree with Fred here. If you want to promote such a system,
you should be looking at commercial technology.

--
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Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.

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