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Hello there! It's me again! N2FNH with more on those amazing Packet Internet Gateways,Amateur Radio's Best Kept Secret! This time around, it's Packet Politics! I have learned there is a raging debate in the Digital Domain these days concerning Packet Radio, world-wide message forwarding and the Internet. Up to until recently, I thought Packet was just about the only safe harbor in the Hobby shielded from the passionate and sometimes ugly political scene that can manifest itself on the Low Bands or local VHF and UHF repeaters. I was wrong!
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It is an on-going war-of-the-words between the so-called Land Line Lids and the Radio Frequency Lids. You can march right down to the front line by simply connecting to your local Packet BBS and begin reading all those verbal Scud Missiles under the DEBATE and Land Line LID headers and decide for yourself just who's winning and who's losing.
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Here's the story: Best I can tell, it goes this way: When Packet Radio first made the scene some 10-15 years ago, a lot of figurative blood, sweat and tears went into fashioning the AX25 protocol and then, extensive efforts were put forth in every Ham community to develop and refine regional Packet Networks to enable users to reach out and touch somebody else someplace else in another town or state. But it was the idea of sending messages that really got a lot of folks into the Packet scene and so message-handling and the subsequent forwarding of those messages moved from the local VHF and UHF circuits to a globe-spanning HF Network making heavy use of the 75, 40 and 20 Meter Bands.
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With this new network, you could use nothing more than an Hand Held Radio, a computer and a TNC to send Packet Mail to other Amateur Radio Operators overseas. A typical message might take a few days to get across the country and maybe up to a week or so to reach distant ports of call in other countries. And this system functioned very well and still does, in most places around the world. However, there have been a few changes. It may have started with LONNY back in the late 1980's when some NBC and BBC broadcast engineers who were also Hams got this great idea to link London and New York City together by taking a couple of Packet Nodes and connecting them to each end of a commercial undersea transmission cable. And it worked! Very well! Now, Amateur Radio Operators could enter through Manhattan and exit into foggy old London Town and explore each other's local Packet environments, enjoy keyboard QSO's and exchange third-party messages, which by the way, opened a big can of worms a few years back...but that one is another story.
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In any event, this was the first instance where a non-Amateur Radio medium was used big time to extend the communications range within this aspect of the Hobby. There was a lot of debate at the time, but nowhere near the amount of verbiage generated over the arrival of the Packet Internet Gateway Bulletin Boards and their effect on message-handling. Like an Invasion of the Body Snatchers, these amazing devices began to insinuate themselves into many localities allowing Ham Operators to connect by Radio and leave by Telephone and end up thousands of miles away all through auspices of the Super Information Highway.
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It appears that some BBS SysOps may have decided that using HF was at best an inefficient means of message-forwarding and decided to attach an extra cable and modem to their Packet BBS's and suddenly the mail moved a lot quicker! I found this out myself. A year ago, I sent a special test message through my local packet BBS and then chased that message over the next week using a regional Internet Gateway to see if and when that test message showed up at strategic BBS's in other states and in other countries.
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It took a day for the message to move across the state and into Eastern Canada. It took a week for the original test to reach places like Turkiye, Lithuania and the Canary Islands. Then, a few months ago, I tried it again. Same deal: a day to move across the state and into Eastern Canada but now, about a day to reach places like Ecuador, Italy and Russia. At some point in its journey, my message slid into an Internet Storm Drain, did the wormhole bit and washed up on a distant shore, just like that.
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And this is the focus of the Packet Politics! The Land Line Lids say marrying Amateur Radio with the Internet enhances the hobby by streamlining the process and speeding up the message forwarding. Besides, they say, the Internet is here to stay and is not about to go away. It is better to make the best use of this powerful communications tool rather than reject it wholesale. Meanwhile, the RF Lids offer the strong opinion that where Packet Internet BBS's spring up, the local Packet Network suffers since the need for that Network is sharply reduced or simply not needed at all, resulting in neglect and eventual disintegration of the system. The analogy is similar to a virus infecting a healthy, thriving organism and inflicting irreparable damage to that organism.
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I have discovered many SysOps of traditional Packet Networks within a specific Packet environment will not support any message forwarding that they feel in some way involves the Internet. However, it is possible to find within the same environment, an active Packet Internet Gateway allowing users Telnet access to remote Gateways overseas. That same Gateway may also be used by HF DX'ers to link with distant stations to arrange schedules and compare notes. And that same Gateway may also be a launch ramp for global APRS traffic, bypassing more traditional HF and VHF pathways in favor of the Internet as a grease-lightning transmission medium.
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I would be tempted to say I am neutral but I would be lying since just about every aspect of my Amateur Packet activity involves the Internet in some way. For me, if the plugs were pulled, I would not be happy because I have made many very fine acquaintances over the wires and radios in many states and in many different countries. I am not sure how healthy Amateur Radio is your community, but here in Upstate New York, VHF and UHF repeater and simplex activity is at an all time low. Finding a conversation in progress is like trying to win the lottery. Good luck!
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You know you got problems when a local Ham Club runs an article in its newsletter with the headline: "Problems With Our Repeater" and you read on to discover the club president is begging his members to please, please use the repeater more...it's not being used enough. You know you got problems when the January, June and September VHF Contests arrive but you have no clue because your scanning radio intercepts no signals on contest channels. Some say the HF Bands are flourishing and it appears they are but isn't the vast bulk of Operators mostly aging Baby Boomers who might just the last wave of Hams to key down and talk up before those highly valued and much exalted frequencies eventually fade into nothing more than scratchy and clicky static?
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The debate goes and on but it's academic. The Internet has successfully infiltrated and infused itself with our Hobby and there it will stay until we Amateur Radio Guys and Gals decide to put it to the best possible use or until Amateur Radio is finally and completely decommissioned, leaving us with just our cordless phones, pagers, garage door openers and CB Radios.
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In closing, I say if there's a Gateway or BBS in your neighborhood that's cooking with gas because it's connected to the Internet, use it and use it well. Support your SysOp if he or she needs the help. If somebody suddenly gets the bright idea to hook up his Voice Radio to Internet Phone or VoxChat, see what you can do to help out and then use it when it's built. Otherwise, one by one, Radios will be turned off for the last time, big Pentiums will boot up night after night all over town and it will be www.insert your favorite web page here.com or even worse, Amateur Chat Room on some unseen fully wireline VoxChat Server. So give it some thought! In the meantime, this is Bill Baran, N2FNH, saying 73 for This Week In Amateur Radio.
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