[HamGateNJ] Hello From West Orange

[Mark Herson, N2MH]

As K2IE said, thanks to N2NOV for setting up this list and for trying to
fill the shoes of Brian, N1URO, our late ip address coordinator. I know
those shoes are big, having done the job of NJ coordinator many moons
ago.

I first got on what is now called AMPRnet in the late 1980's. Phil Karn,
KA9Q, had just written his "net" program and people were starting to get
on tcpip on 2m for the first time. Phil handed me a floppy disk and an
ip address and I got started. 44.68.0.7 if I remember correctly. I
stayed active until the mid 1990's after I moved to NJ. During that
time, K2MF, W2NV (sk), K2LSX (sk), WB2KMY (now K2AD) and myself started
up the EastNet Mafia which morphed into the EastNet network of today.
After my move to NJ from Queens, TheNet X1J became a well used tnc
operating system and we transported a great deal of ip traffic, not only 
in the local area, but via a wormhole to England, courtesy of 
WA2NDV/G1HSN and NBC News. While I was still active in NJ, I also 
assumed the ip address coordinator role using the X1J network mainly as 
the backbone network. ip encapsulation over the Internet had not been 
invented yet by K2MF before I became inactive.

Fast forward 20 some-odd years and I'm back on AMPRnet, this time
through an ipip tunnel server running on a raspberry pi. And, with my
original NJ allocation, 44.64.24.0/24. Things have changed, some good,
some not so good in AMPR land....

In the interim, I have been very active in AREDN Mesh work. I have been
able to put together a "SuperNode" which connects almost 20 mesh islands
together. On top of that network, I have built a pbx network of almost
60 pbx's worldwide with almost 400 users. In addition, using my
experience with email last century, there is now MeshMail running on the
mesh network. Finally, I have also experimented with hblink, dvswitch,
et al, and have have done DMR completely on the mesh with no need for
Brandmeister, and other servers.

Over the last year or so, I have merged AMPRnet and Mesh and made each
other network available to the other network. For the rundown, surf on
over to http://n2mh-web.n2mh.ampr.org (44.64.24.194). If anyone wishes
to play AT&T (AMPR Telephone & Telegraph) and has a sip phone, you can
direct dial me by ip address at 44.64.24.251

73 for now,
Mark, N2MH
n2mh at n2mh.ampr.org
MeshPhone 973-2111