2025-02-14 — 2500 Email Subs! Hamshack Hotline, What’s New at DLARC 2025-02, Explaining the Use Case for Data Over Repeater - Part 4, AREDN Production Release 3.25.2.0, 44Net Email and Web Hosting
Philip - Mercifully, yes, I did forget IBM Token Ring. Thanks for the reminder of that one. That was the most cumbersome, trouble-prone network system I ever had to deal with. Those connectors... <shudder>. Even the "IBM never did anything wrong" partisans at my employer shook their heads in dismay at that one.
You had to smash some pretty big holes in the wall to fit those connectors through! Saw that done to a cinder block wall once..
For all of the "determinism" that was attributed to token rings, there still was a recovery mechanism for when the token inevitably got dropped/lost. Which was every bit (or more) complicated that CSMA/CD collsiion retries. And likely had very much higher jitter, even if those events didn't happen very often.
And when bridged networks came along... oh the memory of "explorer frames" trying to find the path to another station! Woe be unto you if you had a topology of interconnected token rings with loops! That could be a brittle situation.
Now all that remains of original DIX ethernet is the frame format. No CSMA/CD, all full duplex, switched networks without collisions.
Check out www.tprfn.net we are working hard to build out an US based RF network. The network is based on Packet Radio and incorporates, nodes&BBS, Winlink Hybrid RMS, APRS sms & email & AREDN. Access the HF network with either VARA HF, ARDOP, AX25 300bd, all the connection and station info can be found on the website along with a live connections page that show the VARA HF activity across the network.
Most of the network hub station offer local VHF/UHF access with AX25, some VARA FM and AREDN .
Glenn - I'm a fan of what TPRFN is doing and have written of it at least once or twice in Zero Retries. While I'm not a fan of 300 bps packet radio, VARA HF is a great foundation for an HF network. ARDOP, PACTOR (1-3), and Robust Packet aren't quite equivalent to VARA HF, but far better than 300 bps packet radio. For me, HF finally got interesting (and networking over HF became practical) once these newer data modes became available.
Thanks Steve, agreed on 300bd, we have it available on Net105, there is no forwarding there but we wanted to give those keyboards access to TPRFN if they wanted it. At least 95% of the network traffic is with VARA HF which for Packet Radio is a game changer.
Did you forget Token Ring?
Philip - Mercifully, yes, I did forget IBM Token Ring. Thanks for the reminder of that one. That was the most cumbersome, trouble-prone network system I ever had to deal with. Those connectors... <shudder>. Even the "IBM never did anything wrong" partisans at my employer shook their heads in dismay at that one.
You had to smash some pretty big holes in the wall to fit those connectors through! Saw that done to a cinder block wall once..
For all of the "determinism" that was attributed to token rings, there still was a recovery mechanism for when the token inevitably got dropped/lost. Which was every bit (or more) complicated that CSMA/CD collsiion retries. And likely had very much higher jitter, even if those events didn't happen very often.
And when bridged networks came along... oh the memory of "explorer frames" trying to find the path to another station! Woe be unto you if you had a topology of interconnected token rings with loops! That could be a brittle situation.
Now all that remains of original DIX ethernet is the frame format. No CSMA/CD, all full duplex, switched networks without collisions.
Check out www.tprfn.net we are working hard to build out an US based RF network. The network is based on Packet Radio and incorporates, nodes&BBS, Winlink Hybrid RMS, APRS sms & email & AREDN. Access the HF network with either VARA HF, ARDOP, AX25 300bd, all the connection and station info can be found on the website along with a live connections page that show the VARA HF activity across the network.
Most of the network hub station offer local VHF/UHF access with AX25, some VARA FM and AREDN .
Keep up the great work Steve Stroh and thank you!
Glenn/N3MEL
Glenn - I'm a fan of what TPRFN is doing and have written of it at least once or twice in Zero Retries. While I'm not a fan of 300 bps packet radio, VARA HF is a great foundation for an HF network. ARDOP, PACTOR (1-3), and Robust Packet aren't quite equivalent to VARA HF, but far better than 300 bps packet radio. For me, HF finally got interesting (and networking over HF became practical) once these newer data modes became available.
Thanks Steve, agreed on 300bd, we have it available on Net105, there is no forwarding there but we wanted to give those keyboards access to TPRFN if they wanted it. At least 95% of the network traffic is with VARA HF which for Packet Radio is a game changer.
Here's some amazing work that this community might be interesting:
ESPARGOS: ESP32-based WiFi sensing array
Develop and deploy WiFi sensing applications effortlessly: ESPARGOS is a phase-coherent ESP32 antenna array.
It's worth the 10 minute time investment watching the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXwDrcd1t-E and https://espargos.net/
Louis - Thank you VERY much for the strong recommendation for watching this video. It's one of the cooler things I've seen this year.