Ken had some good points but perhaps a few things to clarify. I a more middle of road type ham, I can see pros and cons to both sides of these issues and I know that there will be those who don't want to hear this but bear with me if you can:
1. WL2K would only be a short term replacement for a served agency's e-mail in an emergency situation where they lose their internet connection or mail server. I can not imagine any ham operators who would be opposed to that since this is what we are all about ... as we do the best we can for supporting emergency communications. The amounts of traffic would need to be throttled back to only the most important messages. And this would likely be going through the mini e-mail server ability of a Packlink AGW connection that can connect with an agency LAN and allow this traffic via a standard e-mail client such as MS Outlook Express, etc., on VHF/UHF packet radio to the next nearest working internet connection. 2. The WL2K system has been designed specifically to be as simple as possible for the served agency ... so yes, in that respect, it is a no brainer. However, the behind the scenes systems are quite complicated and, yes, it could fail. So far they have indicated that they have only had a few hours of downtime which seems reasonable to me. I admit that if they had a failure right in the middle of your emergency situation, it would be very unacceptable. But then again, even HF communications (like yesterday) can go down as well for an extended period. I am personally not sure of whether the current configuration is all that secure (2 mirrored stars), but they are increasing this to a future maximum of 8 redundant world wide servers so it will be better than a lot of other systems. If the internet portion of WL2K goes down, we still should have a rudimentary NTS/NTSD backup system that will kick in to continue traffic handling. However, things like attachments, accuracy, and quick delivery won't be possible like it is with WL2K. 3. WiMax, while not here yet officially, is nearly here when they finalize the protocols perhaps this summer? Actually, I use an early version of WiMax right now as I keyboard to all of you via an Alvarion 7 mile 2.4 GHz I MBPS link to my ISP. These links are not easy to set up however as you need absolute line of sight with no obstructions. One of my closer paths (5 miles) is completely blocked by my neighbor's barn about 1/4 mile away:( Luckily, by cutting down some trees on the other side of the highway, I was able to access the 7 mile link to the 300 foot tower from about 20 feet up on one of my towers. WL2K systems do use high speed linking now so check out the winlink.org web site and see what they are already doing. 4. No comment on this point:) 5. I have not talked to any RV/cruiser users, only our local test team that has been sending e-mail with Paclink AGW to a Telpac node. Also, on-going testing via the SCAMP mode on HF using Paclink SCD. You need a good connection on HF for SCAMP to work, but when you reach about 10 db S/N ratio, it can scream. Having said that, it is a lot more difficult to reach 10 db S/N than I ever imagined. (S-meter readings are not 5 or 6 db per division:(. For those who want weaker signal throughput (at much slower speeds of course) you have to use the proprietary and very expensive SCS modem which is the only other product available with those kinds of ARQ speeds. I personally do not feel it is appropriate to be using closed protocols on amateur radio, but that is a different issue for each individual to decide for themselves. 6. The ego issue is a serious problem. The WL2K group is currently made up of four individuals with one as principal spokesperson. It would be ideal if they would be open to critiques and questions from others without attacking others and without trying to suggest that anyone who does not believe in and fully accept and embrace this system is a fool. (Sadly, they have done this). They would actually have more support from the ham community if they had a marketing person who understands marketing and how to "win friends and influence people." What I have seen, is that they close down discussion when they start feeling uncomfortable because some one disagrees with them, even if only on some sticking points. They should welcome any challenge, since if their system is as good as they say, they have nothing to fear. They choose not to do this and worse, they have some loose cannons who are very vitriolic with a take it or leave it attitude. Some have taken them up on the leaving part as what happened to a central U.S. ham in the past week. Very unfortunate. They have even gone so far as to remove people from their discussion group who disagree too strongly. This is also very unfortunate because it weakens their position. Their attitude now is that since the ARRL BOD has accepted WL2K as "the way," and because the ARRL ARESCOM proposal is basically a done deal, with WL2K bypassing nearly all the NTS/NTSD message routing, there is nothing further to discuss. You are either with us or against us and if you are against us you need to go away. Even if you are 90% in support of WL2K that is not good enough. It has to be 100%. I am very uncomfortable with this kind of attitude. I would bet a lot of other hams are too. Having this much power in the hands of so few is a heady thing and abuse of power is common in the human condition. I honestly don't believe that any small group of hams has ever had this much control over other hams in our history. There is also the possibility that one person with the right knowledge could sabatoge the system. It is not impossible for someone to have a nervous breakdown or become irrational. Could this ever happen? It is very remote. But it still should give a thinking person some reflection on a pretty darn serious issue of emergency communications that must not fail. Most other distributed ham systems by their very nature can never be so affected. The good news is that the ARRL has some relationship with the WL2K group with some kind of escrow of the software so that it can not be taken away from the ham community in the future. I would expect that we will be hearing a lot more about this in the future. I would not expect anything even remotely close to WL2K coming along for a long time. Probably we are measuring in terms of years. The LinLink group does not seem to be getting very far in even figuring out what they want to do yet ... much less coming up with some thing that could work as an open source collaborative solution. Are there any other groups even working on an alternative solution? I doubt it very much, but if they are could they let us know? I also wonder if the reason the U.S. is leading in this area is because our government allows third party communications and many other countries do not. So there is much less of a reason to develop such a system elsewhere. Perhaps in an ideal world, we would see a collaborative of amateur radio operators working together on developing a very secure network that could meet the request by FEMA. Or at least work toward that goal. Especially if it was sponsored by ARRL. While WL2K does not meet this request in total, at least it is the one thing in place and working right now. Most of us simply do not have the software writing ability that has been spent over many years in developing the WL2K. Or do we? Thanks for bearing with me:) 73, Rick, KV9U -----Original Message----- From: Ken Wilhelmi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 10:46 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Re: Winlink take over? Guys- I have been reading this thread since it started weeks ago. Very interesting. Point 1 - In an attempt to sell our services, WL2K is billed to served agencies as a "replacement for your Internet connection". Clearly it is not. Point 2 - In an attempt to sell our services, WL2K is billed to served agencies as a "no brainer" it is so simple to use. Fact is, WL2K has many layers of software and hardware. It is very involved to setup and maintain. There are many possible single points of failure. Point 3 - IF the object is to come up with an alternative to the email/internet connection for served agencies, the ARRL/WL2K folks should be pushing adoption of WIMAX systems. Bandwidth is not an issue, connect the nodes 25 miles apart and provide email, full motion video and anything else to 100s of location at one time in real time. Point 5 - Talk to any user of WL2K; a "cruiser" or RVer. They know the message limitations. Messages are short and cryptic. They rarely spell out an entire word. They use Q signals and other means of keeping the message as short as possible. Point 6 - Remember that the WL2K push is simply ego driven. A few folks who want to prove that they can do it and overcome the problems of all the layers of software and hardware and make it work. Then it will fall on the non-ego driven folks to implement it and make it work. That is where it will fail and is the system's weakest link. This scenario is not new, we all have seen the same thing happen at our jobs. It is very common. Just relax. WL2K will get replaced by the next big thing in a few months and we will all forget about it just like we have with Y2K. :) 73 - Ken - N7QQU -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.4 - Release Date: 4/6/2005 The K3UK DIGITAL MODES SPOTTING CLUSTER AT telnet://208.15.25.196/ Yahoo! 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