--- In [email protected], Nate Duehr <n...@...> wrote: > Most of us in data networking see a 128Kb/s half-duplex network as > quite a long ways from "wow" these days. Tethering to my cell phone > is faster on both CDMA and GSM networks now, and my house has a burst > speed of 16Mb/s down, and 2Mb/s up... so, 128 Kb/s is ultra-limited in > my thinking. But as a ham interested in having "alternative > networks", it's cool.
Well, there's an additional benefit that it's very easy to deploy a 128kbps D*Star network that covers many tens or perhaps even hundred of square miles (if you can get it high enough) just to, say, cover some local events where the hams want to be able to get all their laptops linked together to exchange photos and text and what-not (or for emergency services, if you're into that sort of thing). Certainly WiFi is just as easy to deploy (and much faster), but the range is much, much more limited -- getting one square mile there is tricky, unless you (and all your users) start getting power amplifiers. CDMA/GSM beat out D*Star in both speed and (generally speaking) reliability *when they're available*. The carriers do have their own "cell sites on wheels," which they use for disaster areas or *very large* public events, but they generally aren't going to provide one if you just want to cover a local event with a few hundred people involved. I suppose some of the "wow" comes from people whose last experience with digital networking was packet radio at 1.2kbps. :-) ---Joel
