[nos-bbs] TELpac nodes and JNOS

[maiko at pcs.mb.ca]

Hi Rick and group,

> 1. If xNOS was able to do much of this, and do it some years ago, why did it
> not succeed in being developed for a large part of amateur radio?

I don't know. Perhaps because there was no central authority like IARU, ARRL,
TAPR, RAC, whoever to lead such an endevor ? I got involved in 1992, much later
than I wished I had. There's alot of history that I simply don't know about.

> 2. Is it primarily because of the overly geek requirements to get it to
> work?

Again, I don't know. I do notice a trend in our society where people are
being taught more and more how to be 'mouse masters'. It's hard to complete
with that environment anymore.

> 3. For proper use of an xNOS system, do you need to use the 44 IP address
> scheme? Or can you use DHCP in some way ?

No, the 44 address scheme is a worldwide (class A) network with the idea to
tie all amateur radio boxes together in one glorius network, all by radio.

Of course, this has not happend, and in cases where it was not possible to
use radio, the internet was (is) used in most cases now. The 44 traffic
over the internet is usually done with IP encapsulated in IP. In other
words, the 44 frames are encapsulated in commerical ip numbers.

The 44 network is a VPN in the context of the internet. On the radio
side, the 44 network is a standard LAN. We used to run that stuff for
years here in Winnipeg, at 9600 baud.

I have never bothered to use DHCP for NOS. I just assign NOS a fixed
ip number behind my firewall/router, making sure it's outside the DHCP
pool. That's it.

> 4. With slow, e.g.,  less than 9k6 speeds, TCP/IP is not practical and
> seems to have been one of the main downfalls as to why it never caught
> on.

Don't know. Unless you had lots of cash, the bandwidth became obsolete
when the internet surfaced. The only way to get back the bandwidth was
to spend ALOT of money on equipment that perhaps one other person may
have gotten as well, and that person lives 500 miles away, so
essentially you would be left talking to your self.

If I had money to blow, I could setup an emergency network of linux boxes
running JNOS, or AX25 utils, or windows boxes running TelPacnode. These
boxes would be linked using a backbone network (here's where you need
the cash) using Motorola Canopy or Tsunmai Radios that could cover the
entire south province. Throw a network switch or two into the backbone
at certain locations to give you the internet gateways.

My internet access to my home is Motorola Canopy to an Wireless ISP 5.5
miles away. It's awesome, but not cheap ! Mine has an agregate of almost
5 Mbps, the new Canopy is apparently over double that. The radios them-
selves have bandwidth limiting per session. Simply incredible technology.

Think how much more expensive it will get when you need to place these
comm points at strategic locations, like commercial towers, or buildings
with every single phone company having something on top of it type of
thing. Or for the ultimate setup, your own independently owned towers.

Anyways, I'm gettting carried away now ...

> 5. What is the main problem with running this stuff on the MS Windows
> platform as a Windows program ?

The primary issue is that JNOS has it's own TCP/IP stack. When you compile
the NOS variants, there are no links to the linux socket libraries, or the
wsock dll's - NOS has it's own stack. Great for the DOS days, a pain in
the neck for modern days. If I got paid to work on NOS, probably I would
strip out the socket stuff and have it link in the linux socket libs
instead, making NOS just another application like Baycom's BAYBOX,
or the Swiss XNET software.

JNOS will run in a DOS window quite well, but the main drawback is how
does one link the TCP/IP stack of JNOS to that of MS Windows ? In the
old days, you used NDIS drivers (very old now), not workable anymore.

The only other options were :

1)  Network Cards to link JNOS to Windows (PC has 2 network cards),
    both could be plugged into the same hub, switch, or router.

     a) make sure windows does not have control of ONE of the cards
     b) in a dos window, load a packet driver (ne2000, whatever) for
        the ONE card not controlled by windows
     c) run JNOS on top with an 'attach packet ...' command.

    I have not tried this for a long time. Don't know if it even works
    for Windows XP for that matter. But it does work, and can get you
    good uptimes.

    K2MF (Barry) I believe still does this for his MFNOS on OS/2, Barry ?

    In any event, this is not practical to most users out there, but I
    wanted to illustrate it non the less.

2) SLIP (serial line IP) - not sure if windows ever supported that.

> why could not a GUI interface be developed, perhaps similar to AirMail to
> handle much of the complicated stuff and keep it away from non technical
> people?

That is on the list of things to do. It will happen, but not overnight.

Maiko Langelaar / VE4KLM