Actually there was the capability to have it in the AX.25 network. There was a WP (White Page) and YP (Yellow Page) server that was a distributed architecture that users could query.
And yes, Packet radio died because it worked. As packet became popular and people used it, the traffic went up and eventually people left because now the network was too congested to do anything. Yes, showing up with the satellite uplink is definitely an advantage. It will be nice when we finally get a geosynchronous bird in orbit. But I think that are two other areas that you somewhat left out that we can provide capabilities, the first is the removal of the requirement, that "we show up". The second is the ability to provide additional bandwidth for health and welfare traffic that no one else has a tasking to handle. How can we do better than "we show up"? Well, that's because in many locations, we're already there. We don't have to wait for the satellite trucks to roll in, we don't have to wait for the atmosphere to clear enough to get a connection through the clouds. We're there an operating, before, during, and after. And the H&W traffic is something that we have long provided and something that most of the government agencies don't want to worry with.(They have more important fish to fry). From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nate Duehr Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:41 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: New guy On 1/21/2010 10:34 AM, Woodrick, Ed wrote: Actually the way that routi ng is done in D-STAR is much better than the routing done in the basic AX.25 protocol. In AX.25, you had to specify each node along a path. The additional protocol stacks like KA-Node and others act a little more like D-STAR routing in that once connected to the network, you then specify the destination and the network automatically figures out how to get there. Not to go TOO far afield from D-STAR here, but AX.25 networks could have EASILY added what D-STAR has... a master DB that did a lookup on a destination and just "went there" with the datagrams. The real killer of AX.25 for anything except APRS was bandwidth. 1200 bps just isn't even CLOSE to useful these days, and my fear is that after the "newness" wears off, it won't be enough for D-STAR either. I've been saying this for years... we're the guys that show up and get Comm going for the first 72 hours. After that, the larger and better funded organizations will be 95%+ back online or the areas affected will be evacuated. We're far more useful to emergency folks if we show up with a $500 satellite uplink, knowledge of how to provision a NAT router and 802.11 -- than we are as Amateur operators. We LEARN the RF basics and electronics basics to handle "let's slap something together that works", but showing up saying "this D-STAR radio will fix your problems", just ain't gonna cut it, these days. It'll fix their problem in a poor way until the cellular company COW trucks roll in. That's about it. Nate WY0X
