On Rancho Cucamonga Fire's communication support unit we have incorporated all
three technologies. In day to day use the WiFi on the unit connects to mobile
broadband with a different provider to backup the primary mobile broadband.
With an ID-1 and ham operator the WiFi connects to a server at a centrally
located fire station for sending and receiving reports and photos.
The emergency managers for the area cities are interested in an EOC to EOC
data connection to run the WebEOC application. This was demonstrated last
November with the Rancho EOC connected to the Upland EOC WebEOC server.
The wow for me is being able to open the ID-1 kit (a 20" toolbox) add a
computer, directional antenna, power supply and have a network node anywhere in
the city without an ISP.
Mike KD6GWO
jkoltner <[email protected]> wrote:
--- 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
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