Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!mimsy!oddjob!hao!boulder!sunybcs!rutgers!lll-lcc!ptsfa!hoptoad!gnu From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems Subject: Re: Public Digital Radio Service wireless modem proposal Message-ID: <2788@hoptoad.uucp> Date: Wed, 19-Aug-87 04:15:31 EDT Article-I.D.: hoptoad.2788 Posted: Wed Aug 19 04:15:31 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 21-Aug-87 06:43:35 EDT References: Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco Lines: 125 > First, he is totally inaccurate and misleading about the dissimilarity > between ham radio and computer 'hobbying.'... > ...lumping all hams into one "boring" pigeon > hole isn't accurate, let alone fair. As a 15-year computerist who got a ham license to experiment with packet radio, let me comment. The ham fraternity is seriously reactionary. Hams work hard to keep others out, so there will be more frequency spectrum for them to use, and they actively spy upon and report (to the Feds) violations of the mickey-mouse rules they operate under. Everything you do is under control of government regulations which take years to update, and the army of reactionary spies makes it hard to operate outside the rules. In contrast, the computer fraternity is seriously radical. New ideas and new people are welcomed. Experimentation is encouraged. If you get a good idea and you do it, people are free to do things the old way or do it your new way. You don't need to ask the FCC whether you can plug a better printer or piece of software into your computer, or whether you are permitted double the speed of your machine. If you can afford to buy it or have enough imagination to create it, you can use it. I was interested in packet radio as a vehicle for carrying data for computer users. While at least 4 or 5 people in the Pacific Packet Radio Society (the local ham digital-radio group) agreed, the rest of the hams were solidly against the idea of computer users being able to just send their data through the ether without going through all the hassle that THEY had had to go through. They wanted to use their new, experimental packet radios for the same old shit -- ragchewing (ham-ese for shooting the bull over the radio). > One sub-hobby of widespread popularity involves relaying messages through an > organized network of stations. This networking concept is going through a > metamorphosis as a result of the introduction of computer technology. > Networking, of course, is what we are talking about with radio modems. > Hence, attracting computerists into ham radio is a 'natural' which will > benefit everyone. What hams knew, or wanted to know, about computer networking in 1982 would fill a thimble, maybe. There are a few people like Phil Karn who span both computer networking and ham radio, but the rest were basically ignorant. Their "networking" consisted of passing 10-word messages from one person to another, by voice or Morse code, down a line of humans, on a fixed nightly schedule. This was (is) mostly done by people who have nothing better to do than read other peoples' messages over the air. This has nothing to do with computer networking, though these people have finally realized that they can automate the processing if they can ever get their packet radios to work reliably enough. So now they want a few computer people to come in and fix 'em up so they can do their same old same-old, without, of course, letting many new computer users in to crowd the radio spectrum. [They claim to be practicing for providing emergency communications service. However, if the public was permitted to use the airwaves for REGULAR communications service, then no EMERGENCY service would be needed, since the regular service would continue to work in emergencies. E.g. the cops don't rely on hams, they have their own radios for regular and emergency use.] > Mr. Decker would never have made his suggestion about > putting radio modems on 160-190 khz if he had had the slightest notion of > the mathematics and physics of communication. If radio modems are to be of > any practical use for more than one pair of terminals every 40 miles, they > must use very high data rates. (56,000 data bits per second as a minimum.) That's funny, the hams who are currently doing packet radio are doing it at 1200 baud. It's in fact illegal to go faster than 9600 baud over ham radio in the United States. Ham packet radio was started in Canada, where the government didn't get nearly as much in the way. It took an immense amount of work in the US just to get the use of ASCII legalized over the air -- before that, it was Morse or Baudot or nothing. 56Kbit modems are a research project at a few places, like Linkoping University in Sweden; Stanford; and at Tucson Amateur Packet Radio. > Mr. Decker suggested extending range by using > digital repeaters. Hams have found that in practice using more than two such > links in a row tends to bog down, although the newer NETROM modification to > the conventional TAPR TNC software seems to be a big help in linking. As explained above, the ham fraternity knows nothing about networking. This is why they are using very lossy links, but with protocols where acknowledgement and retransmission only happens end-to-end. This data is being relayed at a maximum of 1200 baud -- HALF DUPLEX -- between each relay point. If you connect directly (no repeaters), you might get 1000 baud since you have to turn the line around once in a while for acknowledgements. If you use one repeater, divide by more than 2, since each packet has to go to the repeater, then, from the repater to the destination. (Each of these hops involves a delay of up to .3 seconds while switching from receive to transmit, depending on the quality of the radio.) Just going through one repeater, you drop under 300 baud; two repeaters gets you say 100 baud, or 10 cps. That is, when all the data gets through error-free. No wonder it "bogs down" on more then two links! > Pressure to end > the Morse requirement is growing even among hams. Also, some influential > people within the FCC are beginning to say publicly that some of the > restrictions now put on hams (particularly the ones on message content) are > unrealistic and unreasonable. The pressure may be "growing" but it's sure not grown. The FCC backed a proposal to open up ham radio to computerists who didn't know Morse code, a few years ago, and it was shot down by comments from thousands of reactionary hams, guided and spearheaded by the ARRL (American Radio Relay League), sort of the AAA of the airwaves. > I am saying only that computer hobbyists > should not reject the option of pursuing ham radio as a medium for radio > modeming solely on the basis of erroneous statements made by someone who > obviously doesn't know whereof he speaks. How about rejecting the option on the basis of MY statements, made by someone who DOES know whereof he speaks. I tried it. I still have my ham license (KB6DQC, technician's). I'm gone though. I'm building free software rather than building packet radio networks, because there is no government actively standing in the way of building and using free software. I figure about 20 years' worth of old hams will have to die before it becomes possible to do anything interesting with the amateur spectrum space. I'd be glad if somebody would prove me wrong. -- {dasys1,ncoast,well,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@postgres.berkeley.edu My name's in the header where it belongs.