Many cities utilize dark fiber provided by the cable companies (the Internet). WEBEOC is WEB based, ala the Internet.
Here in Arlington County the County's fiber network is mostly provided by Comcast Cable with some County owned fiber. Some commercial fiber networks are self-healing and provide better reliability than microwave networks used to interconnect 800 P25. You drive across the USA and you will find every possible type of network implementation known to man being utilized by public safety. I once read about a group that hand built from scratch 802.11 access points to construct their own little wireless mesh network. It wouldn't happen in NYC where they have more than 10,000 fire and police employees but in a smallish county with 10-20,000 consituents and very little tax revenues public safety has to make do. What we would like and what we can afford is two different things. I just recently read where the State of Georgia was just issued $165,000 Fed. Grant to build a D-STAR state wide network. What a waste of tax dollars. OH yeah, great technology but how many ham volunteers in the state can afford the $600 handheld radios? I don't think the grant is paying for a handheld for every ham in the state where currently 99% who have VHF radios are on analog. DUH. Enjoy, dave wa3gin ----- Original Message ----- From: Randy Ross To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, January 04, 2010 6:24 PM Subject: RE: [Repeater-Builder] dispatch centers run through the internet Given the inherit instability of the internet (it was NEVER designed to do what we are doing with it), I would consider any communications system which is reliant upon the internet to be flawed by design and completely untrustworthy. My two cents worth. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of WA3GIN Sent: Monday, January 04, 2010 6:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] dispatch centers run through the internet Yes, and they are called Intranets. ----- Original Message ----- From: Kevin Custer To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, January 04, 2010 5:55 PM Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] dispatch centers run through the internet The Internet is a shared medium. A private WAN/LAN commonly utilizes fiber optic cable or licensed wireless networking to accomplish connectivity. While private systems can deliver Internet, it is not (necessarily) THE Internet. Privately owned facilities like what many CATV, Phone, Internet, and combinations of them can have dark fiber or reserved virtual space that cannot get clogged with Internet overhead. The bottlenecking you might experience with facilities you cannot (do not) control can (will) be the downfall of such a system - unless a SLA can be gotten. A SLA is a service level agreement in which a company guarantees connectivity - to some degree. The more reliability the agreement extends - the higher the cost. Kevin Custer > Jed Barton wrote: > tell me about this system a little bit. > > > You'll note that the manufacturer is not suggesting that you utilize the > Internet for this device. It is marketed for use on a private LAN/WAN. > > Chuck > WB2EDV
