It really matters where you are. High speed digital networks are great in urban areas. In south Texas we have Houston, San Antonio, and Austin as major metro areas and high speed networks are used. In other parts of STX we have counties with populations of just a few thousand. It makes a huge difference in what one can do.
Get
On Thu, Jul 27, 2023 at 02:44 PM, Tadd KA2DEW in NC wrote:
VARA FM sounds great and I¡¯d love to have something like it that we can build a real-time network out of. ?I wonder how long it will be before one could get a licensed copy in a device that costs under $200 or so, in order that one could build a bunch of multi-port network stations.
Being able to use existing VHF/UHF radios certainly has advantages, but they are voice radios, with audio bandwidths in the 6KHz - 7Khz range, when set for "9600bps data". With this limitation, physics gets in the way of moving enough data for a workable data network, particularly with the challenges of terrain, and foliage (particularly on UHF bands)
It's a different approach than you're proposing, but AREDN is absolutely terrific for building a real-time, high speed (TCP/IP), amateur radio network over large regional areas. It is a true mesh-topology network that is distributed, with substantial redundancy. It is really highly developed in Southern California, and we're rapidly moving in that direction here in the Oregon Willamette Valley (check out?
While this is a data-only network, it does a great job of supporting voice communications through VOIP phones. Using the email and "post office" facilities of the Winlink are a snap, through a Telnet Winlink connection.
The buy-in, including an AREDN transceiver, antenna and mounting hardware, is probably 3 - 4 times the entry point you'd like to see. Another constraint is that anyone who wants to implement a node needs at least one genuine line-of-sight path to another existing, active node. From the standpoint of mesh-network redundancy, a line-of-sight path to two or more nodes is preferred.
I know that both in Southern California and in our local region, the amateur radio EMCOMM community has convinced served agencies of the value of these networks, and have received substantial financial assistance from those served agencies.
Mark - AD7EF
