Ziply did the same in my neighborhood and surrounding area. It will be 5-8 years before they abandon the copper and switch to Fiber only and right now they are more interested in laying the groundwork and running the fiber then lighting it up. None of the main infrastructure exists in my town yet. And it will be a slow phase out and phase in. I ended up dropping them all together and have my 5G Cell Modem now and been running 450-500Mbps.
DJ - You're quite welcome. There are hundreds of such well-written and useful gems sprinkled out there on the web and they're tough to find, so I enjoy sharing Zero Retries Interesting ones when I find them.
I've been using the APRS.FI iOS app with my TH-D75 for a few months now. It's pretty good. The messaging UI looks like any other, bubbles and APRS symbols for each side of the conversation. The D75 is in KISS mode so completely bypassing any of the built-in APRS software. I suppose this could be a problem if the iPhone decides to put the app to sleep but I have it set to run in the background all the time. You also have to specifically tell the app to use the TNC or it will prefer the internet connection (as one would expect from the number one Internet APRS site). The other nice thing about using the radio in KISS mode is that you can shut off the radio's GPS and save a little battery power.
At home I'm using a macOS program called QTH, an excellent APRS client that has extensive messaging capabilities. It will keep a running history of conversations similar to most texting apps, and will show bulletins grouped by group name. It is connected to a KISS over TCP TNC that's just a TM-D700 connected to the network via a serial to Ethernet adapter I picked up for $30 or so on Amazon, but that's mostly because I already had the TM-D700. Otherwise I would have built a Direwolf TNC and interface.
None of this was overly difficult to set up. Yes, Kenwood equipment is probably the Cadillac of APRS gear, but there are lots of options out there that are easily set up in an afternoon of tinkering. And for the most part once it's up, it's up. Note that I'm not doing any sort of iGating or connecting at all to the APRS.IS servers, just keeping the packets on my home network. There are plenty of iGates in my area already. I'm also only digipeating WIDE1-1, nothing more.
This fall the real work begins, that's getting other hams in the area to start using APRS for something other than tracking their RVs. I'll probably build a ready to go Direwolf on Pi image that they can just plug into their home network and get set up with minimal configuration. And provide some app recommendations and (detailed instructions).
Ready - APRS messaging is another one of those "hiding in plain sight" technologies in Amateur Radio that most Amateur Radio Operators are only peripherally aware of. They know that their TM-D710 or other "APRS" radio can DO it... it's just torturous to actually USE it with the microphone keypad or other crap input device. Thanks for the reference to the QTH Mac app - I'm going to check that out and potentially use it as you do, as a local network and RADIO application.
Our local Winlink net did an APRS message check-in this past winter. I was impressed with APRS messaging in general. I was less impressed with the Winlink implementation as partial passwords are transmitted in the clear and mirrored on the internet (https://aprs.fi/?c=message&call=WLNK-1&limit=50)
As far as easy, user friendly messaging goes, I used a mobilinkd with both APRSDroid on Android and the APRS.fi app on iOS and found the experience quite nice. I anointed with my TH-D7 and it reminded me why I hated text messaging in the pre-smartphone era. Finally, I started testing on a mobile where the text had to be entered with an encoder knob but gave up because it was just painful.
Ben - Amateur Radio is so far behind on security issues. I think that issue might be the primary reason we start adopting M17 once digital signatures / authentication can be integrated into it. Still adhering to the no encryption rule, but also having reasonable confidence of who is actually transmitting.
I love what Woj is doing with M17 to get out ahead of these issues. It's great that public key crypto is built right in to the protocol.
My Module 17 is scheduled for delivery tomorrow so I'm really looking forward to having a second M17 capable rig so I can at least talk to myself :-)
On the Winlink front, I have sent some suggestions on a less-than-perfect, but much better than they have now ToTP system. It remains to be seen if they will ever consider implementing something like that.
Ben - PK signing isn't "built in" yet - there's a prototype / demo of it in a fork of M17, but it's not baked into M17 yet. And... Amateur Radio needs a central way of registering PK signatures; the closest we have at the moment is Logbook of the World, and that has... issues... of late. Ideally some entity with some Amateur Radio gravitas worldwide could step up and do this... or we form a new one, but my mind boggles at that possibility. In my experience with Amateur Radio of late, if you get ask five different Amateur Radio Operators to come together on choosing a standard... you'll get six and a half different opinions.
Hurricane Electric (one of the big tier-3 internet transit providers) offers free IPv6 "certifications." I put it in quotes because I don't think it would really help on a resume, but the program is a great way to learn IPv6 by doing. To make it all the way through you need to set up IPv6 somehow, either using an allocation from your ISP or one of their IPv6 tunnels, and set up DNS, a web server, and a mail server. It's a great little home lab activity.
Ben - Thanks for that info! It's apparent to me that most of us techies need to move on from our comfortable familiarity with IPv4 and wholeheartedly embrace the more complex, but far more capable, IPv6. I'll try to get this into a near future issue of Zero Retries.
Ziply did the same in my neighborhood and surrounding area. It will be 5-8 years before they abandon the copper and switch to Fiber only and right now they are more interested in laying the groundwork and running the fiber then lighting it up. None of the main infrastructure exists in my town yet. And it will be a slow phase out and phase in. I ended up dropping them all together and have my 5G Cell Modem now and been running 450-500Mbps.
Dan - Thanks for the confirmation that it's not just our little corner of the world that Ziply is so uncoordinated.
Thank you for the pointer to the Open Source IPv6 Textbook! That is an excellent resource!
DJ - You're quite welcome. There are hundreds of such well-written and useful gems sprinkled out there on the web and they're tough to find, so I enjoy sharing Zero Retries Interesting ones when I find them.
I've been using the APRS.FI iOS app with my TH-D75 for a few months now. It's pretty good. The messaging UI looks like any other, bubbles and APRS symbols for each side of the conversation. The D75 is in KISS mode so completely bypassing any of the built-in APRS software. I suppose this could be a problem if the iPhone decides to put the app to sleep but I have it set to run in the background all the time. You also have to specifically tell the app to use the TNC or it will prefer the internet connection (as one would expect from the number one Internet APRS site). The other nice thing about using the radio in KISS mode is that you can shut off the radio's GPS and save a little battery power.
At home I'm using a macOS program called QTH, an excellent APRS client that has extensive messaging capabilities. It will keep a running history of conversations similar to most texting apps, and will show bulletins grouped by group name. It is connected to a KISS over TCP TNC that's just a TM-D700 connected to the network via a serial to Ethernet adapter I picked up for $30 or so on Amazon, but that's mostly because I already had the TM-D700. Otherwise I would have built a Direwolf TNC and interface.
None of this was overly difficult to set up. Yes, Kenwood equipment is probably the Cadillac of APRS gear, but there are lots of options out there that are easily set up in an afternoon of tinkering. And for the most part once it's up, it's up. Note that I'm not doing any sort of iGating or connecting at all to the APRS.IS servers, just keeping the packets on my home network. There are plenty of iGates in my area already. I'm also only digipeating WIDE1-1, nothing more.
This fall the real work begins, that's getting other hams in the area to start using APRS for something other than tracking their RVs. I'll probably build a ready to go Direwolf on Pi image that they can just plug into their home network and get set up with minimal configuration. And provide some app recommendations and (detailed instructions).
Ready - APRS messaging is another one of those "hiding in plain sight" technologies in Amateur Radio that most Amateur Radio Operators are only peripherally aware of. They know that their TM-D710 or other "APRS" radio can DO it... it's just torturous to actually USE it with the microphone keypad or other crap input device. Thanks for the reference to the QTH Mac app - I'm going to check that out and potentially use it as you do, as a local network and RADIO application.
Our local Winlink net did an APRS message check-in this past winter. I was impressed with APRS messaging in general. I was less impressed with the Winlink implementation as partial passwords are transmitted in the clear and mirrored on the internet (https://aprs.fi/?c=message&call=WLNK-1&limit=50)
As far as easy, user friendly messaging goes, I used a mobilinkd with both APRSDroid on Android and the APRS.fi app on iOS and found the experience quite nice. I anointed with my TH-D7 and it reminded me why I hated text messaging in the pre-smartphone era. Finally, I started testing on a mobile where the text had to be entered with an encoder knob but gave up because it was just painful.
Ben - Amateur Radio is so far behind on security issues. I think that issue might be the primary reason we start adopting M17 once digital signatures / authentication can be integrated into it. Still adhering to the no encryption rule, but also having reasonable confidence of who is actually transmitting.
I love what Woj is doing with M17 to get out ahead of these issues. It's great that public key crypto is built right in to the protocol.
My Module 17 is scheduled for delivery tomorrow so I'm really looking forward to having a second M17 capable rig so I can at least talk to myself :-)
On the Winlink front, I have sent some suggestions on a less-than-perfect, but much better than they have now ToTP system. It remains to be seen if they will ever consider implementing something like that.
Ben - PK signing isn't "built in" yet - there's a prototype / demo of it in a fork of M17, but it's not baked into M17 yet. And... Amateur Radio needs a central way of registering PK signatures; the closest we have at the moment is Logbook of the World, and that has... issues... of late. Ideally some entity with some Amateur Radio gravitas worldwide could step up and do this... or we form a new one, but my mind boggles at that possibility. In my experience with Amateur Radio of late, if you get ask five different Amateur Radio Operators to come together on choosing a standard... you'll get six and a half different opinions.
Speaking of APRS messaging, there is a weekly "APRSThursday" net. Generally 300-400 people check in each week. https://aprs.to/events/aprs_thursday/about/?submenu=about
Dj - That is cool - could you add that to Netfinder - https://netfinder.radio? Thanks!
Hurricane Electric (one of the big tier-3 internet transit providers) offers free IPv6 "certifications." I put it in quotes because I don't think it would really help on a resume, but the program is a great way to learn IPv6 by doing. To make it all the way through you need to set up IPv6 somehow, either using an allocation from your ISP or one of their IPv6 tunnels, and set up DNS, a web server, and a mail server. It's a great little home lab activity.
Ben - Thanks for that info! It's apparent to me that most of us techies need to move on from our comfortable familiarity with IPv4 and wholeheartedly embrace the more complex, but far more capable, IPv6. I'll try to get this into a near future issue of Zero Retries.