[HamGateNY] Welcome to HamGateNY
Andrew J. McLeod, KB2AJM (ex. KD2PLE)
andrew at kb2ajm.us
Sat Nov 28 20:18:32 EST 2020
[A little historical rant for those who are truly bored...]
On Nov 28, 2020, at 11:51 AM, Joe Cupano <joe at cupano.com> wrote:
It was amazing how much infrastructure was unaffected in the rest of NYC.
Well that's my point exactly. In terms of my own (non-EMS, as I was an EMT at the time as well) memory of that day, I mean there are layers upon layers of generations of infrastructure in NYC going back to the 1800s including undersea COPPER cables from that era to Europe that are still functional to this day (we used to have a map of all the cable and satellite routes at the time.) At the time I was working in midtown for a small CLEC international wholesale Telecom company (a provider's provider) and I remember that was also the beginning of the era where:
A) the utility companies starting to use crawler robots to pull new fiber through the sewers, as they had no more conduits or other places to route new cables, and;
B) the beginning of starting to use all the "dark fiber" that the utility companies had but barely used for themselves (power companies like ConEd started trying to get into the voice Telecom business...)
But even so, without all of that, the internet managed to reroute and self-heal enough to go around the damage and keep the internet going where it could, whereas a SONET ring only has two possible routes, only knew the next hop, and was usually in a smaller (block/building) scale than internet connectivity (city scale.) But you knock out an OC192, and that's that. Compare that to the still mostly "circuit switched" framework of the telephone companies at the time... (I don't recall enough about the ATM + Frame Relay or SS7 protocol stacks to say anything about their rerouting and self-healing capabilities, but with all the proprietary routing of the phone companies at the time, they didn't communicate as effectively with their competitors, so their switching equipment didn't always know how or were even unable to reroute on a grander scale...)
I used to work at 40 John Street and got off the A train at WTC every morning - and how much they almost hit. I had just moved to a new job in midtown less than a month before. My cousin and her husband and infant son lived in Battery Park. And I used to go in and out of those already highly secure Telco towers in nonsuspect looking buildings...
To this day I don't know if it was part of the plan or if AlQaeda was just really lucky in terms of how much communications infrastructure that they took out that day. But I remember that map in our office showing almost every undersea cable coming from Europe, the Med and north Africa all coming I to one central point at the tip of Manhattan, and with a few offshoots down to Newark/Hoboken NJ...
That day (and the following weeks) convinced me of the internet's capability.
TCP/IP has a lot of overhead in terms of packet size with regards to RF, I know. But I (personally) have not yet seen anything networking-wise to compare to it's resiliency and massive scalability. (I was also already an early Vonage customer at the time, and while we couldn't call certain places regionally from our landline phone in northern NJ, my BlackBerry and my Vonage phones never went out...) I think that's why it won the protocol wars versus all the less scalable LAN protocols from Novell, MS + Apple. It's just what it was designed for...
I am not that old per se (at least not as old as that guy in the mirror every day...) Some in the industry would consider me a "youngin,'" and even comparatively inexperienced, which is true. But that was a learning experience for a lot of people, and regardless of politics, I think that our country (and most of the world in general) have matured their internet capabilities orders of magnitude based in the lessons of the past. Concepts like FirstNet, GETS/WPS, and other things are great strides forward.
But that's not to say I trust anything enough to put all my eggs in one basket. I live in a rural area (but "in" town and we rent - so my antenna space is limited at the moment,) and I've never liked putting all my eggs in one basket for anything... Similar to military use, I've read some new civilian stuff about the reemergence of HF, and combined with things like ALE and some of these Ham protocols that I don't know enough about yet in detail, I know we have the capability to bridge the gap not if but WHEN that massive internet infrastructure chokes one day (like SQL Slammer did back when) from a solar are, EMP, Gamma burst from a star - whatever...
For those like me who view this as a hobby (not necessarily mutually exclusive of the latter,) we've got a lot of new "toys" (not just hardware, but protocols, etc.) to play with nowadays, and I'm sure we'll discover a lot we can do that the internet cannot...
For those like me who also view this from a [disaster and OEM/ARES/RACES/MARS] service-based perspective, or those afraid that we need to prove our utility now ahead of time to ensure we have a seat at the table when the need comes, I am reminded daily of every short-term thinking bureaucrat, boss and administrator that I've ever worked for in ANY field who refused to plan for the long term, only to have our predictions come true. So even if they don't listen or think they've got better things than "just Hams" right now, I'm sure most of you already know from experience - irregardless of whether we have a seat at the table now, they'll be knocking on our doors (probably because the phones and internet don't work) when the time comes...
I agree with both perspectives:
Optimally, in a perfect world, I think it'd be great if we had a totally RF network capability that didn't rely at all on the internet for any linkages (although somehow some DNS queries do still need to be answered externally.) However;
...the realist in me knows that at this moment, especially in some parts of the state, we don't completely have that capability (or even at all - for example me in the interim.)
But in terms of an inter-net-worked infrastructure (RF + Inet,) at least I can contribute something to the system, and whether it's primary or redundancy, hopefully it will fill a gap that would otherwise be empty for the time being...
So there's my "once upon a time, old f at r+" story. It's just MY opinion and perspective - I don't expect anyone to agree with it in it's entirety. I'm no master or sage. But for whomever is still awake after reading it, it is why I am the way I am...
[...end rant.../]
73
AJM, KB2AJM
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On Nov 28, 2020, 11:51 AM, at 11:51 AM, Joe Cupano <joe at cupano.com> wrote:
>
>Well said, AJM
>
>It was amazing how much infrastructure was unaffected in the rest of
>NYC.
>I worked for a global financial that started hosting other financials
>on
>our IT infra
>that were displaced by the events in a few days.
>
>73,
>
>- Joe, NE2Z
>
>
>Andrew J. McLeod, KB2AJM (ex. KD2PLE):
>> On Nov 16, 2020, at 10:53 AM, Christopher Piggott
><cpiggott at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Internet to help carry between those areas where a direct RF
>> connection may not be possible
>>
>>
>> I do understand that. I'm just worried about the idea of being so
>> dependent on public wired and wireless infrastructure.
>>
>>
>>
>> I too worry about the dependency on public infrastructure. On the
>> other hand, you do have to admit that:
>>
>> a) there is a lot more geography covered by it than by Hams nowadays,
>and
>>
>> b) in my mind (personal opinion from personal experience,) the
>lessons
>> of 9/11 (when I was still living in northern NJ and was a Voice + IP
>> tech/engineer in Manhattan at the time) demonstrated the self-healing
>> and resilient capabilities of TCP/IP and packet networks, as was
>> intended by the DARPA people who to my understanding invented it to
>> (hopefully) maintain distributed command and control after a nuclear
>> attack. When maximum destruction at ground zero took out not only
>> Verizon Bldg. #7 but all the fiber, copper and AT&T switching
>> equipment in the basement of tower (1 or 2) and - between cable cuts
>> and power loss - the majority of the interconnects coming into the
>> eastern seaboard, when analog switched phone, cellular, many of the
>> local NYC broadcast TV and radio stations (antennas on the roof of
>the
>> WTC) went out. But my Blackberry work pager worked, as did AOL and
>> Yahoo instant messenger, and a lot of people communicated with their
>> families that way that day...
>>
>> Although I do not have all the faith in the world that some have in
>> our infrastructure (including FirstNet) nor do I live all the way in
>> conspiracyland, I do believe that our dependence on the internet for
>> all types of connectivity (even some of the ignorant hospitals I work
>> for depend almost entirely on remote connectivity across large
>> healthcare systems with distant data enters with almost no local
>> infrastructure now,) has led to at least a somewhat stronger, more
>> resilient network in that regard.
>>
>> And to that extent, for what we are doing, for small hops in between
>> the regions that we simply do not have enough Hams to cover, I think
>> we have no choice but for a hybrid system. After all, "44net" by
>> definition is related to our IPv4 allocation. And so unlike some
>> projects that are intended to be entirely wireless, I think hybrid is
>> in our DNA so to speak...
>>
>> Barring solar flares and all out armageddon, I think we have no
>choice...
>>
>> That's just my opinion...
>>
>> 73,
>>
>> AJM, KB2AJM
>>
>> On Nov 16, 2020, at 10:53 AM, Christopher Piggott <cpiggott at gmail.com
>> <mailto:cpiggott at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Internet to help carry between those areas where a direct RF
>> connection may not be possible
>>
>>
>> I do understand that. I'm just worried about the idea of being
>so
>> dependent on public wired and wireless infrastructure.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 9:18 PM Andrew J. McLeod, KB2AJM
>> (ex. KD2PLE) < andrew at kb2ajm.us
><mailto:andrew at kb2ajm.us>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hello Mitch KE7WWT.
>>
>> Without drooling too much, I just wanted to say that
>> your extremely ambitious project(s) mirror my own
>> interests in being able to "INTER-network" and
>> converge these vital (and fun) communications
>> technologies - voice, data/packet/digi, VoIP, APRS,
>> RF, terrestrial, etc.
>>
>> You guys up north may be some of the poorest counties
>> in NYS, but down here in the rural Catskills we have
>> some simar statistics too (just not ones to brag
>> about.) I and a few dispersed others also have
>> ambitious ideas that many surrounding us are either
>> put off by or simply not interested in. And so while
>a
>> few projects of communal interest are making some
>> progress regionally (ex. Winlink, an ARES/RACES
>> repeater, some APRS digipeaters and I-gates, etc.)
>> others such as myself have been doing similar to you
>-
>> trying to build it all ourselves out of shallow
>> pockets and an even smaller lot of property.
>>
>> I find your portable C&C center very interesting, and
>> similar to my (thus far more) meager and slightly
>> larger 12U rolling 19" rack case I've built for ARES
>> and personal use. The entire idea of being able to
>> congregate info from a multitude of sources and
>> potentially do so two-way over range without the
>> requirement of failable infrastructure is exactly
>what
>> interests me as well (too many years of IT and EMS,
>> including working in NYC before, during and after
>9/11.)
>>
>> So while - with the exception of my SignaLink USB on
>> HF - my setup is (mostly) analog so far, my goal as
>> time and finances allow is to expand this into the
>> exact same voice/packet INTER-networked type of
>set-up
>> you have in mind, both stationary/base as well as
>> portable.
>>
>> I would definitely be interested in chatting as to
>> where you are and where you see your next steps to be
>> going, and if I can offer any assistance from my
>> background I would be happy to do so - AND THAT OFFER
>> GOES TO ANYBODY ELSE WHERE.
>>
>> With regards to internet connectivity, TCP/IP, data
>> and VoIP equipment, I have (home) business-grade
>> internet with a 13 usable block of public IPs, as
>well
>> as considerably more TCP/IP, VoIP and security
>> equipment (Cisco, Ubiquiti, etc.) at the moment than
>I
>> do Ham, so while I know TCP/IP is a heavy-overhead
>> protocol, if any projects of interest have the need
>to
>> (for example) convert an incoming RF analog voice or
>> fax signal into TCP/IP to send out over the internet
>-
>> or to use VoIP to link RFs at 2 locations over
>> internet (sort of like EchoLink does,) those are some
>> of the ideas I've been toying around with...
>>
>> Enough for now. Glad to make everybody's
>acquaintance,
>> and TTYS.
>>
>> 73 again,
>>
>> Andrew J. McLeod, KB2AJM
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Get BlueMail for Android
>> <http://www.bluemail.me/r?b=16117>
>> On Nov 11, 2020, at 6:52 AM, "Maurice A. Mitchell -
>> KE7WWT" < maurice at maurice-mitchell.com
>> <mailto:maurice at maurice-mitchell.com>> wrote:
>>
>> KE7WWT
>> Jefferson County NY (North of Syracuse) located
>just a stone's throw away from the fence at Fort Drum. Retired Army -
>26 years, 7 months, 5 days and 2 hours.
>>
>> I run the WINLINK Packet system and serve on the
>both ARES and RACES. I am a DHS SHARES operator with ALE/Voice and HF
>RMS WINLINK. I am also a MARS operator.
>>
>> I start this project almost a year ago and thanks
>to changes dealing with COVID, I have ran out of time, but hope to have
>things change soon. I wanted to use the 44Net as a way to combine, in
>one box or two (ammo cans) the ability to have a mobile/portable node
>that serves Broadband Hamnet, APRS I-GATE and digi, remote control of
>base station radios, DMR and maybe D-STAR hotspots, and of course the
>ability to link and interface Packet.
>>
>> Jefferson and its surrounding counties (Saint
>Lawrence and Lewis) are the three poorest counties in the State, and as
>such, there is very little activity that requires expenditure of money.
>As such, I have taken the "build it and they will come" mentality. In
>the end, it does not work - This is baofeng country. Not a lot of
>hams, and not a lot of invested in the art and science of
>communications. That said, I still want a method that can tie me into
>various networks to not only pull information, but also to share
>information for the benefit of a larger group. I want something that
>is not internet-dependent, but is internet-enabled.
>>
>> In the end. . I need a lot of help.
>>
>> Mitch
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: HamGateNY <hamgateny-bounces at n2nov.net
><mailto:hamgateny-bounces at n2nov.net>> On Behalf Of Charles J. Hargrove
>> Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2020 23:28
>> To: hamgateny at n2nov.net
><mailto:hamgateny at n2nov.net>
>> Subject: Re: [HamGateNY] Welcome to HamGateNY
>>
>> So far we have seen introductions from:
>> KA1NJL, K2JJT, WW2BSA, KB2AJM and AJ2A.
>>
>> How about the rest of this 92 person group?
>> What is your set-up or what will it be?
>> What software, hardware, services, etc?
>> Let us all help each other to get things going.
>>
>> On 11/5/2020 11:06 AM, Charles J. Hargrove wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Since the merger of the WNYPG mailing list
>> into the HamGateNY list, we now have 87
>> members (some who were on both lists). This
>> would be a great opportunity to introduce
>> yourselves. Give us your callsign, what area
>> of NY State (or outside of it), what kind of
>> packet system you are running, etc. Let's use
>> this list as a request-for-help and sharing
>of
>> knowledge/projects. I will start: - N2NOV -
>> Staten Island, NYC - EmComm lead for
>> ARES/RACES during 9/11, 2003 Blackout, etc -
>> Founder/President of NYC-ARECS (
>> http://www.nyc-arecs.org) - running JNOS
>> system since 1998 starting on DOS and now
>> Linux - NY State 44Net/ AMPR.org
>> <http://AMPR.org> coordinator - IT field
>since
>> 1989 (databases, networking, help desk, web
>> hosting) - ran for Congress as a write-in
>> twice ( http://www.HargroveForCongress.us) -
>> Secretary of the Staten Island Libertarian
>Party
>>
>>
>> --
>> Charles J. Hargrove - N2NOV
>> NYC-ARECS/RACES Citywide Radio Officer/Skywarn
>Coord.
>>
>> NYC-ARECS/RACES Nets 147.360/107.2 PL
>> ARnewsline Broadcast Mon. @ 8:00PM
>> NYC-ARECS Weekly Net Mon. @ 8:30PM
>> http://www.nyc-arecs.org
>>
>> NY-NBEMS Net Saturdays @ 10AM & USeast-NBEMS Net
>Wednesdays @ 7PM on 7.036 Mhz USB (alt 3.536)/1500 hz waterfall spot;
>MFSK-16 or 32
>>
>> "Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It
>seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the
>electrified borders." - Ronald Reagan
>>
>> "The more corrupt the state, the more it
>legislates." - Tacitus
>>
>> "Molann an obair an fear" - Irish Saying (The
>work praises the man.)
>>
>> "No matter how big and powerful government gets,
>and the many services it provides, it can never take the place of
>volunteers." - Ronald Reagan
>>
>>
>>
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