[nos-bbs] A.X25 then, A.IP now ??? - thinking outloud (fwd)

[maiko at pcs.mb.ca]

A bit of history first, to give you all an idea of where I'm leading ...

During the 90's, I designed, developed, and installed automated banking
machine and point of sale networks, using a software *switch* to route
transactions to the appropriate authorizing institutions, etc.

Many of the ATMs (ABMs) used the X25 protocol to communicate to the
switch. The whole concept of X25 was really cool (still is) and I got
to really liking it, becoming quite experienced in setting it up, and
writing/porting comm drivers for a variety of different Unix flavors.

That probably explains why packet radio (A.X25) grew on me.

At the tail end of the 90's, our company saw a new breed of ATMs (ABMs)
coming out in the market. In particular, NCR (NDC), was starting to ship
units that gave us the option of using TCP or UDP over IP, instead of
the usual X25 protocol. This was a turning point, and for many of our
customers that could afford it, X25 was on the way out, IP was the
new way of doing it.

Warranted, alot of new customers could not afford to purchase new
ATMs (ABMs), so X25 was still in use here and there, but then again,
alot of the used atms only had SDLC or BISYNC to offer, making X25
less popular anyways (from my experience).

Here's the main point I want to bring up !

 In the amateur radio field, A.X25 (packet radio) was created from
 the X25 specification. I'm surprised that no one has come up with
 an A.IP (ip over radio) spec to parallel the industry movement from
 the X25 protocol to the IP protocol. Or has someone brought it up ?

When things settle down, and winter starts, one of my projects is
to perhaps implement an A.IP protocol (actually nothing more than
raw IP with a SOURCE CALL and maybe ONE DIGI field). The nature of
IP really only requires us to id ourselves I would think. That should
make it legal, right ?

Implementing it would be very easy. I should think we could continue
to use EXISTING tncs, running either KISS or SMACK firmware, to make
this work. KISS just delimits the data that the tnc is putting out or
getting in, right ?

Of course A.IP would have to be on a dedicated non A.X25 frequency,
unless there was agreement between the A.X25 spec and A.IP to have
some type of flag at the very first byte of data.

Anyways, just some thoughts. It would be neat and alot more usefull
with the modern days apps out there, to have literally raw IP going
out and coming in a TNC. I think so anyways ...

I'd like to have comments on this, what do you all think ?

Regards,

Maiko Langelaar / VE4KLM