Thought crossed my mind, would AREDN in a satellite (similar to an OSCAR) work, and make any sense? Being up in the sky, trees and hills would not get in the way. But the amount of time it spends up in your sky may be too short to be useful. And be up in another AREDN node's sky. Assuming that ground AREDN node antennas have enough spillage to see the satellite. And be able to make a link over a few hundred miles. Maybe have store and forward inside the satellite, like the old fashioned packet system 25 years ago.
Of course, it's really expensive to launch... Probably not enough benefit to justify the cost, except maybe the satellite also does other ham radio work.
Of course, it's really expensive to launch... Probably not enough benefit to justify the cost, except maybe the satellite also does other ham radio work.
Would AREDN nodes link to a satellite, I suspect not however I don’t have any studies to cite for guarantee. My main concern however would be the dopler shift of the signal. 802.11a/b/g/n to my knowledge were never built to handle dopler shift, I believe this would cause significant issues with syncing that connections would be unlikely to work.
The AREDN Protocol could could run over a satellite link (like satellite internet does) but that would likely need a different RF technology. This is where if you have a very high speed data satellite it can be useful. There may however still be a need for tweaking the AREDN protocol to handle the longer latency.
Regarding store and forward: That’s a really big can of worms and is known in the industry as Delay Tolerant Networking, also informally as InterPlanetary Internet. It essentially relies on many programs being updated to handle running store and forward and different routing technologies being employed. Storage is often a key concern as you need lots of storage to hold until ready to send. It’s being worked on in the industry but at the moment high speed IPv4 networks just are not there for it.
Our MESH group from LAECT/ARES LAX Northeast District used a Verizon provided Cell-On-Wheel (COW) at the 2018 Baker 2 Vegas Relay Race quite successfully. Not only did it provide us with a connection to the internet, but we also tunneled back into the SoCal AREDN MESH with all its resources. Speeds were close to 20Mbps. I am finishing up a write-up about the experience soon.
This opens a whole new world of possibilities:
- connect clusters of AREDN MESH nodes with the internet and each other
- leverage AREDN MESH as well as COWs, i.e. increase reach and usefulness for both
- overcome topographical challenges and maintain high speed data connections
- access AREDN MESH connected resources like Winlink, VoIP, NAS, etc. both locally and nationally even in a grid-down scenario like a major earthquake, hurricane, etc.
We are thrilled at the possibilities! The next step would be to have geosynchronous amateur radio satellites that can support this on a permanent basis in addition to commercial and governmental options. The benefits for public service and disaster communications would be immense.
Our experience with AREDN MESH and high speed satellite connections at B2V already has changed our disaster communications toolkit tremendously and the way we train our operators in the District.
"I am finishing up a write-up about the experience soon". Excellent! Nice work! I think I speak for almost everyone reading this here: we are *really* looking forward to seeing your write-up. Thanks for your post.
73,
- Don - AA7AU
https://www.arednmesh.org/content/event-support-report-and-first-use-mik...
73 Timm
Hi Don and the group,
Here is the link to the write-up, it is a PDF:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pX2aUEmXx7CKJHz-_SMVb3VdBMlVpK5T
Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
Andre
I had not thought about QST, but why not?
Glad you liked it!
You and the AREDN team have had the vision to create a true emergency data powerhouse. And we are training our radio operators in its use and AREDN MESH in L.A. is growing by leaps and bounds. It has even gotten my YL excited about amateur radio and that is no small feat.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
Just remember if you submit to QST and it is accepted you loose the rights to publish it elsewhere (including the AREDN site) unless you can negotiation with the ARRL for usage due to this submission clause:
”Articles accepted for publication become the property of The American Radio Relay League, Inc. In other words, we acquire all rights to your article.“
That is good to know.
Good thing I posted here first
AREDN is a success story that needs to be told because it is incredibly powerful and we have barely begun to explore all the exciting possibilities.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
I would like to thank everyone for their encouragement and kind words!
The article has been submitted to QST and received, so it is out of my hands now.
Regardless of the outcome with QST, I enjoy spreading the word about AREDN, training our radio operators in its use and help in any way I can.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
Oliver,
You should definitely submit the article, but I would recommend either adding a section or even a whole article to opportunistically interfacing with elements of infrastructure networks. Your satellite example is one where you were able to approach Verizon's field personnel and "get it done" without all sorts of approvals, process and dare I say, "pinheads" mixing it. Credit goes to those on your team and Verizon's for field collaboration. We see that kind of thing in our network (AT&T) and with the networks of others all the time. It would be instructional to see this kind of operation documented in a variety of modes and to ultimately make these field collaborations more normalized and efficiently available. Stories help make that case because everyone wants to be protective of their core business/network while being good citizens. If nothing else, if nothing breaks, it's good PR.
At the New York City Marathon, our Amateur Radio operators got a fiber-based feed from the ABC Network truck which raised the bar and made it understandable to those involved in future years to provide a hardwire feed to the Incident Command. At the Passaic County Fair, the ce'll service is marginal at best, so we built two different solutions for redundancy of Internet access off-site: one was a cellular gateway with a directional cellular antenna array connected to our mesh located in a prominent part of the park. By giving the gateway a good spot with a good antenna it was able to dominate access to the cell sites. We also linked to a second gateway outside the park as a backup. It more hops, but did its job when needed. We needed to keep the secure dispatch console up and running and also needed to carefully watch the local weather radar for public safety/situational awareness. The co-located mobile command center cellular gateway, while equipped with a mast-mounted antenna, it was among the thousands of user devices brought by the public and First Responders, all of which were remote from the cell site, and therefore marginal in their access. Getting to a better spot supported by a mesh backhaul made a huge difference. We even supported Wi-Fi calling through to the cellular carriers with decent performance.
There's a whole lot more describing and configuring these options, but whether it is for bridging a gap for a tunnel, or to access an intranet or the Internet, I think there is a place for these stories as they create constructive dialogue on what one may or must do in exigent circumstances.
If you would like to discuss this, I am including my emails and phone.
Vy 73,
Gordon Beattie, W2TTT
201.314.6964
w2ttt@att.net
w2ttt@att.com
Hi Gordon,
Your point is well taken. In fact, the ad-hoc public-private partnership that developed at Stage 8 gave us hope that in a disaster we can work together cooperatively and productively.
Our group is very interested in expanding this cooperation and demonstrate this cooperation to our served agencies.
And I agree those are the stories to tell. Practical examples benefit everyone.
I will be in touch!
73,
Oliver K6OLI
I know that GSM phone calls are encrypted per the GSM standard.
I wonder if - when you use the LAN calling option on your phone - if the data in that link is encrypted too?
It makes sense to me that the encryption done at the phone would still be done in any case.
The following links seems to confirm that it is (thus problematical from a Part-97 point of view):
http://blog.privatewifi.com/are-phone-calls-over-wifi-hotspots-safe-from-hackers/
https://nolanwifi.com/2016/05/15/verizon-android-wi-fi-calling/
Not sure if your question/comment was directed at me, but I will tell you what our LAECT/ARES LAX Northeast District currently considers best practice.
We use Linphone on mobile phones or VoIP phones (Grandstream, etc.) when making calls on the MESH. We disable all encryption protocols during setup. When using the MESH for VoIP we are really only interested in talking to other people on the MESH, not in making commercial calls outside of the MESH.
If you had a COW available and wanted to make a phone call through your provider, you would either use the COW provider's cell service directly or the COW's Part 97 WiFi. In that case you would neither need nor want an AREDN MESH connection because a commercial option would be available. For instance, the COW available at B2V Stage allowed Verizon customers to make regular mobile phone calls and WiFi calls for customers of other providers, as well as use the WiFi connection for commercial internet, just like any cell tower does.
The use case we tested at B2V, however, was one of combining forces and leveraging commercial and amateur radio resources in a disaster. For example, imagine a major 8.2 earthquake knocked out all communications in Los Angeles County. Now, if there were a COW deployed at the Los Angeles Medical Alert Center (MAC) and one at the hospitals in the MESH cluster of the ARES LAX Northeast District the MAC could use the AREDN MESH tunnel through the COW to talk to every MESH connected hospital on the other side of the hills. If the other ARES LAX Districts (Northwest, South and High Desert) also connected their hospitals in MESH clusters and received a COW each, then the MAC would be able to talk to each hospital through VoIP, send faxes and emails and share data by using a clever combination of COWs and AREDN MESH.
In numbers: using AREDN MESH and amateur radio operators you would only need 5 COWs to connect all 74 911 receiving hospitals in L.A. County, instead of 74 COWs, with one at each hospital.
Or imagine a grid-down disaster like an earthquake, where all hospitals are still connected via AREDN MESH in the Southland and then a single COW is added and provides a connection to the outside world to all 74 hospitals!
Now multiply that by all the other served agencies who would be in desperate need of COWs, e.g. Sheriff's Department, LAPD, Utilities, electrical companies and hundreds of others and it is easy to see what tremendous leverage and value AREDN MESH adds to disaster communications.
Moreover, you would not need COWs at all if there were enough AREDN MESH nodes available to cover all the hospitals and the MAC direct line-of-sight. Thanks to the generosity, support and ingenuity of the AREDN MESH community more MESH nodes are coming online every week in the Southland and therefore coverage is expanding continuously.
So please remember: COWs are one option among many amateur radio operators can employ if available and make work for disaster communications.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
Having statements from their side would be very helpful to others who would like to emulate your successes. It would also be useful to have a technical document that could be handed to a COW operator, explaining what we do, and how he can connect to us.
Bob W8ERD
Our experience at B2V was completely ad hoc. We worked with the Verizon Disaster Communications team on location. It literally came down to Curtis of Verizon and me talking about what they were doing and what we were doing and trying it out. In a word: we communicated well.
The AREDN MESH in L.A. County is all amateur radio operator driven. We train our operators to build, maintain and operate their own communication kits and deploy them when needed at the facilities they are assigned to, as set forth in the County of Los Angeles Department of Health Services Reference No. 1132 Guidelines, which define the ARES LAX mission.
Our strategy has been to continually provide hands-on training to our operators and practice competency and operational excellence. We hope to demo the capabilities AREDN MESH to hospital administrators and the MAC at the Statewide Medical Health Exercise coming up in November on a larger scale.
I will keep your suggestion in mind and pass it along. In the meantime I would advise your group to get a handful of portable MESH nodes configured for your Go-Kits and demo them to your amateur radio groups and your served agencies, keeping it as simple and non-technical as possible. Whenever we demo its most relatable capabilities (VoIP, Video calls, e-mail) AREDN MESH practically sells itself.
Feel free to e-mail me if you want to exchange ideas.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
There is a lot of good stuff here and I am not trying to knock any of it down.
My comment was in response to one of the other posts where it says:
"We even supported Wi-Fi calling through to the cellular carriers"
I understand that this involves providing WiFi access to (unlicensed) members of the public, so that they can have voice comms using the WiFi-calling feature available on some cell phones. I wanted to point out that in doing so, the hams are carrying (on the Part 97 mesh network) fully-encrypted data streams that - technically speaking - would constitute violation of FCC rules. A further gray area (more related to your posting) is that the hams are facilitating business operation of the commercial cell company that could be done by other means (e.g. more cows). In a real emergency, this would be overlooked - welcomed even - but in a demo, or public event support situation, it's treading close to the edge of trouble. I hardly ever get excited about fine-print violations of FCC rules, but this one raised a red flag for me.
Hi Ken,
I've gone around and around with many on this subject and a search would land you arguments on both sides. While I respect that your opinion works well for you, my position, and the operating rules I have across my backbones in San Diego and Riverside counties focus on the following section:
(2) Restrict transmissions of any digital code to the extent instructed;
(3) Maintain a record, convertible to the original information, of all digital communications transmitted.
I would argue, that so long as you are not encrypting the information you are presented to transport, you are not using an unspecified digital code. And, even if you are, you may do so unless and until requested by a Regional Director. At that point you decide whether to stop the practice or begin to maintain a record of the data you have passed (an arduous, impractical requirement to adhere).
Over the years the FCC has chosen to leave the question unaddressed. I suspect they want to leave it nebulous enough to give Regional Directors some latitude based on the specific circumstances they encounter. My suspicion is they would turn a blind eye to all by the most blatant interpretations.
Bottom line in my book... one needs to read part 97 and get comfortable with what is says. Not many of us are lawyers and I'm not pretending to be one here.
BTW, I am not prepared to participate in another discussion on this topic. Ones eager to should explore the historical debate and decide for themselves. My intent was only to present a counter example to illustrate the disparity of opinion.
Andre
Hi Andre
To further clarify - my intention is not to weigh in on the legality argument itself, just to inform meshers (in case they did not know) that, if they choose to provide WiFi calling for people, what they are carrying is likely to be encrypted.
This is not an "unspecified digital code" - its a publicly-documented coding scheme. But in addition to encoding, the data is encrypted with the SIM card and one of several algorithms (with varying degrees of security). This encryption is not just a handshake, or link-establishment protocol, but every single byte of the data stream is processed in a way to make it readable only by the intended party and obscure to everybody else. In other words, this particular type of encoding is done specifically for obscuring the meaning of the message to 3rd parties.
This is contrasted with using a SIP phone connection - with encryption turned off - where the data is encoded (say muLaw) but not encrypted.
In fact, DSTAR and C4FM, are encoded, but not encrypted. DMR can be encrypted, but the version hams use is not.
i can see you tried to keep it to 4 pages and I understand the editorial process....except....
I think it appropriate to give thanks to the people who started that process and worked hard to lay the groundwork for making AREDN happen at that event.
maybe start here: https://www.aredn.org/content/baker-vegas-2018-broadband-mesh-support
Everyone who was involved in our group's AREDN MESH adventure is mentioned, credited if you will, in the article. But you are right, I can elaborate:
Dave W6JDG led our experimental team, was our rallying point and experienced radio operator. Dave has a strong interest in AREDN MESH and actively promotes MESH in our community. When Don KE6BXT stopped by Stage 8 Dave showed him our active hard-wired setup in the communications tent and the Go Kits gear we had switched off at the start of the race at Stage 8. Don kindly shared his Go Kits ideas with Dave and we have been e-mailing with one another since. We would have loved to have a long talk with Don but the race was ongoing and it was all hands on deck.
Brian KM6IGY was our MESH lead. Brian did most of the prep work regarding MESH for our group leading up to B2V, attending various discussions beforehand. He reached out to the other MESH group around Don KE6BXT and coordinated frequencies with them. We knew Don's group had a plan and we wanted to make sure that we did not interfere with them in any way and they were a pleasure to coordinate with.
Gary W6GSW is the ARES LAX Northeast District Emergency Coordinator and the driving force behind AREDN MESH in our group and our district. While he was not with us at B2V he made himself selflessly available in case we could make a connection. His link testing, his Winlink messages and feedback from Pasadena when we were out in the desert boosted morale and proved that all the hard work and money spent on equipment had been well invested.
Tran K6NHI was our new radio operator with the smartest Go Kit. It was her kit I carried around on one arm during testing, her kit we used in "war driving" to test signal reach. As Brian put it, "Tran's Go Kit always works right out of the box with the flick of a switch".
Curtis Mentz from Verizon worked with us to test, helped troubleshoot and generously provided us with the hard-wired Ethernet connection to the Verizon COW during the race.
Don KE6BXT and Russ KI6MLU's group had entirely different plans and objectives and worked hard towards meeting those. It would be presumptuous of me to comment on their work in any way as it is their story to tell.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
Image: Oliver K6OLI with Tran K6NHI's Go Kit
I will 'double down' on Andre's comment about not wanting to un-bury the dead horse just to flog it some more.
Both of you agree the key statement is: "Read Part 97".
I only add ...and then read it some more until you are comfortable you understand how it relates to this environment.
This discussion of if/when/how to integrate available COWs, and the use of wifi to complete PSTN calls over them with 'normal' cellular and VOIP devices for effecting Emergency related communications - whether the COWs are commercial or owned and operated by a County, State, Federal, or NGO Agency, is almost essential to ensure AREDN's "relevancy" into the future.
One of the most difficult to articulate questions I tried (I think unsuccessfully) to ask on these AREDN Forums a couple of years ago was ...more or less .... "What about integrating 'store and forward' voice and data capability - providing packet buffering in both directions, in AREDN for use with (generically) any other Communications modes?
Like most good Open Source projects - AREDN becomes a black box (magic happens here) module that does it's work reliably.
I was thinking AX.25 packet and HF - any variety or mode - at that time. Satellite Communications with even greater latency per hop is definitely included in that question.
This very rich discussion - two years later, is starting to answer that question.
B2V is not an emergency but it does require temporary extension of Emergency Communication Services so that fuzzy line is a bit fuzzier for this part of the discussion.
'Communicating' with Industry and Government Professionals in the field is, and will always be, life and property saving during 'real' emergencies as will knowing in advance how to 'make it work'.
Thank you all for this thread. We learn most - when we share what we learn with others.
Cheers & 73, ....dan wl7coo
ARRL SJV ASEC
I submitted the article a while back and it was accepted by QST for publication. Last week I received and returned the proof and it will be published in the February edition of QST. The QST version is a bit shorter than what I posted here, but the key points are there.
Thank you everyone for your encouragement and support. And a massive thank you to the AREDN developers, programmers, infrastructure builders, supporters and problem solvers! This is but a small part of your amazing story and there will be many more successes for AREDN and the AREDN team going forward!
73,
Oliver K6OLI
No it won’t. The major problem is that a satellite is moving and not always visible. Even a satellite in geosynchronous orbit won’t work because of the long delays involved. A normal TCP/IP transaction will fail because of timeouts getting ACKs back for each data gram.
That said, there is a a way. Yay NASA!
The technique is delay tolerant networking or disruption tolerant networking. The terms are synonymous.
Take a look at the following.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/dtn
If you really want to play take a look at this.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ion-dtn/
I am looking at building a system of DTN mesh nodes using raspberry Pi B3+. If you think about it this might have application for terrestrial mobile mesh networks.
Now, if the AREDN folks would provide a software stack for raspberry Pi’s. I’m lazy, would rather concentrate on ion-dtn.
Hope this helps.
73,
Chuck
WB6YOK