Ruh-Roh. This could be problematic

[KC2UGV]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... 2010-01-05 (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143035/DOJ_recommends_FCC_quickly_free_up_more_spectrum?s ource=CTWNLE_nlt_dailyam_2010-01-05)

It all boils down to what spectrum is most easily cleared? And will the ham radio ops around the country fight with (Not against) the ARRL on keeping our spectrum ours?

Rapidly clearing spectrum is most easily done at the expense of hobbyist. And for this application, VHF and higher is the most valuable spectrum. All I can say is get on your 2 Meter and above radios. A lot. Hell, hook up EchoLink onto a bunch of simplex freqs, and keep IRLP links active. Just a couple of ideas from me on how to keep our spectrum active, and un-enticing to try to take.

[W3WN]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143035/DOJ_recommends_FCC_quickly_free_up_more_spectrum?s ource=CTWNLE_nlt_dailyam_2010-01-05

It all boils down to what spectrum is most easily cleared? And will the ham radio ops around the country fight with (Not against) the ARRL on keeping our spectrum ours?

Rapidly clearing spectrum is most easily done at the expense of hobbyist. And for this application, VHF and higher is the most valuable spectrum. All I can say is get on your 2 Meter and above radios. A lot. Hell, hook up EchoLink onto a bunch of simplex freqs, and keep IRLP links active. Just a couple of ideas from me on how to keep our spectrum active, and un-enticing to try to take.
UHF / SHF / EHF & Above: Use It or Lose It.

We don't use it. Not enough.

That being said, with the bulk of V/UHF analog TV being moved to new digital channels, there's a huge amount of spectrum opened up. Beyond that, there's a vast amount of spectrum allocated for government (military & "radiolocation" etc.) purposes.

So I wouldn't push the Panic button just yet, [attachment=0:1c4wqcn1]Panic.jpg[/attachment:1c4wqcn1] but definitely we need to (a) keep our eyes open, (b) start further utilizing the bands, and (c) be able to follow the money trail.

73

[N8YX]

Makes one wonder why we haven't built an amateur-radio-centric "AlterNet" using high-speed AX.25 or better technology and placed the wide-bandwidth forwarding links throughout the 902 and 1.2GHz bands.

Oh, wait...that would require effort, cooperation and expenditure on our parts...and the Interwebz are cheap ... :wall

[W3WN]

Makes one wonder why we haven't built an amateur-radio-centric "AlterNet" using high-speed AX.25 or better technology and placed the wide-bandwidth forwarding links throughout the 902 and 1.2GHz bands.

Oh, wait...that would require effort, cooperation and expenditure on our parts...and the Interwebz are cheap ... :wall
More than a few years back (over 10), I was chatting on a 440 repeater with NB3C (then KQ3DX) about whether or not it would be possible, let alone practical, to try and set up a ham-based Regional Area Network or Metropolitan Area Network on 902 MHz.

The repeater in use happened to be the one owned by the Panther ARC (University of Pittsburgh club). A couple of grad students from Carnegie-Mellon (who also were heavy users of the repeater at the time) jumped in and stomped all over the conversation. They insisted, INSISTED, that It Is Not Possible To Run 10 MHz Ethernet Over The Air Period. Could not be done. Forget about it.

(Amongst other things, I stopped using that repeater after that).

Now to put this in it's proper context, today, this was when the very first AX.25 based commercial wireless cards were just starting to catch on, and 802.11 and WiFi as we know it today were in their infancy. So we all know, now, that these two didn't know what they were talking about and were just showing off.

But it's because of antics like this that N5PVL's beloved "hinternet" never caught on in Pittsburgh.

[KC2UGV]

Talk about hindsight lol

[KC2UGV]

Makes one wonder why we haven't built an amateur-radio-centric "AlterNet" using high-speed AX.25 or better technology and placed the wide-bandwidth forwarding links throughout the 902 and 1.2GHz bands.

Oh, wait...that would require effort, cooperation and expenditure on our parts...and the Interwebz are cheap ... :wall

I'll volunteer to be a node/router.

I tried to start working with Charles down in Texas, but he seemed to be quite hush-hush about the software; and unwilling to open-source it. We were chatting for a bit, but as soon as I asked for some source code, he stopped responding for some reason unbeknown to me.

His idea was rather interesting, with channel utilization within a single transmission. But, I digress.

It does require extra dollars, but if the majority of work is done with a PC, utilizing only the inbound-outbound of the radio (No brains in the radio), it wouldn't cost much more than some soldering time (For the interface), and a spare radio; and each node would act as a node/router able to self-heal.

Unfortunately, I was also working on something along the lines of what Charles was as well, and had a Wiki going for it, but there were no offers of assistance. It was an Alternet, with only the ability to send/receive email, and no MIME types short of Text were allowed to be passed, and browse text based websites.

The software stack I had in mind was Lynx and Pico, and the rest was going to be OTS (Off-the-shelf) software such as webservers (Apache), DNS servers (bind), and the like. The email component would have needed a bit of work since I didn't think sendmail would work.

[W7XF]

My co-driver (W9JAM) has been doing mobile Echolink noding... so he's doing his part :angel

[W3WN]

Talk about hindsight lol
Yeah, tell me about it.

When my old engineering firm switched solely to Ethernet, I had a stack of ARCNet cards and hubs to do with as I pleased. The thought had occurred to me that ARCNet, which at the time ran at about 1 MHz, in theory could be modulated to a frequency on 70 cm or higher. Not the fastest stuff in the world (100 BaseT Ethernet was just then coming on the scene), but it would get the job done.

Think about it for a moment... crystal controlled single channel on the low end around 422 - 424 MHz or somewhere on 902, 1 MHz signal fed directly from the card in the PC, running a modulated FM, somewhat "standard" protocol, cheap... well, obviously, it never got off the ground. All the experts insisted it Could Not Be Done, so they not only didn't want to try, they didn't want anyone else to Waste Their Time With Such Nonsense [I also kept hearing complaints from all the ATV people who insisted I'd interfere with THEIR stuff up to 200 miles away... before I had a single card installed in a PC yet. Turf protectors all], especially when We All Had A Perfectly Good Packet Network (which has also gone the way of all unused systems... into oblivion)

I gave up on it; no one else had any real interest (unless I bought all the stuff and handed them a working solution, yeah, right) and eventually all the ARCNet stuff went the way of all obsolete electronics.

Pity.

[W3WN]

Now, that being said, and all that water long ago under and past the proverbial bridge...

Anyone know of a source of first generation 802.11 cards, the ones that ran in the 902 MHz band?

Thought occurs to me that if a group of hams wanted to run a MAN or even a RAN, you put a server or equivalent at a decently high point, and have all the individual's systems point directional antennas on the band at the server. And since we'd be running under Part 97 instead of Part 15, beefing up the antennas and transmitted signal isn't a legal issue.

Theoretically possible, if you can find the cards. If the cards are still around.

Thoughts?

[N8YX]

I tried to start working with Charles down in Texas, but he seemed to be quite hush-hush about the software; and unwilling to open-source it. We were chatting for a bit, but as soon as I asked for some source code, he stopped responding for some reason unbeknown to me.
So now we know why he's so anti-WinLink.

Follow the money trail...

[KC2UGV]

Now, that being said, and all that water long ago under and past the proverbial bridge...

Anyone know of a source of first generation 802.11 cards, the ones that ran in the 902 MHz band?

Thought occurs to me that if a group of hams wanted to run a MAN or even a RAN, you put a server or equivalent at a decently high point, and have all the individual's systems point directional antennas on the band at the server. And since we'd be running under Part 97 instead of Part 15, beefing up the antennas and transmitted signal isn't a legal issue.

Theoretically possible, if you can find the cards. If the cards are still around.

Thoughts?

Cisco still carries them, I believe. I remember them, however, any kinds of mods would be difficult at best without access to the firmware's source (They were PMCIA cards).

The AP's, same problem, but you might be able to get around it there (More space to work, might be possible to mod them).

Like this (Not Cisco, but a quick search revealed it):
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 602_263622 (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230410571141&rvr_id=&crlp=1_263602_263622&UA=WXF%3F&GUID=f99a45b21250a02669704100fff7778b&itemid=230410571141&ff4=263602_263622)

[W2NAP]

if we got our good jobs back around here maybe i could afford a radio :shock:

but really untill then, im off air, cant afford the crap. unless prices come way way down where a new rig is about 10 cents... that i could afford.