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I am eagerly awaiting the AMPRNET VPN as well. There is actually a current method of 44net routing that doesn't involve a local gateway. You can create an IPIP tunnel to the AMPRNET gateway server at the University of California San Diego (AMPRGW) for access to the internet, and you can create a "mesh" of other tunnels for direct connection to other AMPRNET users To be blunt, this system kinda sucks. IPIP isn't supported by every firewall vendor. It needs ports opened for inbound connections (a VPN could be configured for all outbound connections) and this requires a public IPv4 address with no CG-NAT like starlink. Latency and throughput through the AMPRGw is pretty awful.

Our local club has all but stalled out on a repeater linking project partially due to these AMPRNET limitations. We have tried spinning up our own gateway on a VPS (like you mentioned) but our local coordinator has been so slow in responding to emails and requests that our tickets automatically age out before we can get the BGP allocation. We have the skills and experience needed to run the gateway, we just cannot seem to get the allocation. OK, rant done. Sorry and 73. Ben

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Ben - Apologies for the very late reply. This issue's comments just slipped off my RADAR. Potential 44Net users are not completely hostage to a local 44Net coordinator if a coordinator is simply not getting things done. Get on the 44Net email lists and ask for direct contact with 44Net admins.

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Regarding CQ Magazine, Wikipedia is now using past tense when referring to the publication. Maybe that's our official unofficial word.

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Cale - Apologies for the very late reply. This issue's comments just slipped off my RADAR. Yeah, everyone has declared that CQ is dead, time to put a fork in it and move on. Two sources with some knowledge of CQ have confirmed that it's not coming back. I just find it troublesome that CQ hasn't had the decency to address its customers (unpaid creditors) - it's not like there was a sudden death of a primary (that we know of) that caused them to be unable to communicate (though not paying your hosting bill so all your email addresses stop working is... questionable judgement).

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Maybe IPv4 (44Net) is really not the right direction. See this for an IPv6 suggestion

https://destevez.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/tapr_ipv6.pdf

I'm running dual stack at home and in my AWS EC2's.... So maybe this IS the year IPv6 takes off :-)

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Dave - The more I read / study / play with IPv6 the more I like it. It's not that tough to deal with any more. I suspect... oops, confirmed... that Raspberry Pi OS can do IPv6, so that may well be the easiest way to get going with my planned testbed to give each "simple" device (modems, radios, etc.) its own Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for access on the test network and optionally, external access for developers.

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All - Sorry to "comment and close", but I routinely only keep the most recent three or so issues open for comments.

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