Ham Radio Networking (was Re: Rogers Canada using 7.0.0.0/8 for internal address space)

Fri May 27 00:41:09 UTC 2011

Yeah, so...  the thing is there really are benefits to ham radio for
the community.  I 100% believe in that.  And yes, there are a lot of
neck beards but, honestly, look at some pictures from a NANOG meeting!
 ;)

I have been massively inactive in Amateur Radio for some time.  I miss
it.  However I am acutely aware of how ham plays a very valuable,
amazing role in emergency situations.  Even on a small scale, during
the last Seattle snow (which was pretty much a joke by the standards
of any place that gets real snow) I know that Seattle ACS was
coordinating emergency transportation for dialysis patients that could
not find transportation, things like that.  Things that no
right-minded taxpayer wants to pay for the gov to operate on a
continous basis but things that are really absolutely necessary! In
the California earthquakes, ham has often been the only remaining
method of emergency communications.

Now, did 44/8 help in any of that?  I honestly don't know.  Does
ampr.org really need a /8?  That is probably a very reasonable
question.  Honestly I think there are other protocol stacks that
perform much better for digital transmission than IP on ham radio
anyway.  Is it being managed tightly?  I'd say not in some ways...  I
am very glad to see this still exists from a personal perspective but
I haven't used IP over ham in over 15 years and, well:

dhcp182:~ carlr$ dig kb7lig.ampr.org

; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> kb7lig.ampr.org
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 45474
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;kb7lig.ampr.org.		IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
kb7lig.ampr.org.	14400	IN	A	44.24.100.9

;; Query time: 217 msec
;; SERVER: 10.1.0.248#53(10.1.0.248)
;; WHEN: Thu May 26 17:27:07 2011
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 49

But so here is a "system" that is capable of playing a key role in
improving many peoples' lives (if actually used), helping in
emergencies, assisting during armageddon (?), etc.  There are an awful
lot of netblocks that are used for much less valid things (IMHO)...
but since those make money, everyone endorses it and considers it
"proper".

I fully support ham radio retaining a decent block.  Why don't we all
just speed along this IPv6 adoption thing here.  If anyone deserved to
be allowed to avoid IPv6 is is ham radio.  Just the increase in
address size might add another 12 hours to my image transfer!

But seriously.  I am a networking professional but also a ham.  I
could see looking into shrinking the .ampr.org 44/8 allocation, and if
the right decisions were made I could even support it.  But really I
would vote for improved IPv6 adoption by everyone else as well as
better address utilization by commercial entities before trying to
strip this away from ham radio.

As for the note about spectrum:  ham radio has TINY amounts of
spectrum.  I haven't done the math in years / looked at the numbers
but I think a couple of local TV broadcasts take up more spectrum than
all of the worldwide ham bands combined.  So seriously?  Really?

All that said, IPv4 exhaustion is scary, including to me.  I realize
the world won't come crashing down but the potential business
implications are pretty staggering.

Couple of notes:  my opinion, not necessarily my employers.  also, I
have not been involved in .ampr.org politicking since I was a
teen-ager so I prolly don't have all of the facts.  Please convert any
flames to educational status.  :)

Thanks,

--carl KB7LIG

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 3:07 PM, Jaime Magiera
<jaime at sensoryresearch.net> wrote:
> On May 26, 2011, at 5:02 PM, Jack Carrozzo wrote:
>
>> I reckon it'd be about as hard to get back 44/8 as 11/8, but with more
>> neckbeards. Anytime the fcc tries to reclaim frequencies all these guys come
>> out of the wood work with the magic phrase 'emergency communications' and
>> some congressmen get on their side about it.
>>
>> It will be amusing to see, yes.
>
>
> <out of the woodwork>
>        from our cold dead hands.
> </out of the woodwork>
>
> kd8mzn
>
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-- 
Carl Rosevear
Manager of Operations
Skytap, Inc.
direct (206) 588-8899