> D-STAR works with or without Internet. The Internet enables gateways. So does FM. > During Katrina there was Internet connectivity available through a > couple of ISP NOCs (even though the building was flooded). If
I can't find any data or verification of that claim; am I searching incorrectly? For all of New Orleans and surrounding parishes? I did find a report on the general disruption of internet infrastructure by Renesys: "Recovery efforts continue, but obviously, with a significant portion of the city of New Orleans under water and without reliable power or transportation, many Louisiana-based outages will not be fixed for the foreseeable future. ... Many networks in the affected region, especially those in Louisiana, have been unreachable for a prolonged period of time. These networks may not see service restored for some time to come, unless they can be brought back online at disaster recovery sites outside of the region." > Shoot, with that thinking I shouldn't bother having a car because > bridges will probably go out during a major earthquake in my area. Yes, I think it would be pretty dumb to expect your car to be of any use during a major earthquake in your area. If your goal is to have some form of transportation in that emergency, get a bicycle. I think it would be equally dumb to build an emergency communciation system that depended on the internet. If your goal is to have emergency communications in that emergency, get an FM (or better yet, HF) radio and a generator - I'm pretty sure that's what they used during Katrina... > Hams can improvise under conditions that would bring public safety > radio folks to their knees. You put a hotspot somewhere that has > Internet connectivity (these events rarely take out every possible > avenue to the Internet) et voila you are back on the D-STAR network. There are a lot of claims and promises for DStar as an Emcomm solution but no real world success stories. Time will tell, but I'd take an a mutli-mode HF/VHF rig like the FT-857D if I could have only one rig for an emergency... 73 -- John
