[FADCA] More Sedan

[Chuck Hast]

On Friday 29 March 2002 18:27 L, you wrote:
> Hello All
>
> My comments are going to be listed in the body of the message. I will also
> reply to the first message from Chuck. Before I get started, Chuck do you
> have a copy of YOUR messages that you sent to Gary so we know what you
> said???
>

I will get them to you. Bill sorry I did not get your note in time to holler
at you and get with you today. I came back to a mess here and had to
get it fixed so I have almost not looked at this thing at all since arrival
from NYC.

With regards to SEDAN and the strong arm aproach to who has access
to the EOC, it really should not matter, in a more logical real world you
would have access to APRS, FADCA and SEDAN networks, and use
whichever one works for you. To allow one and disallow others is
nothing more than one more move by these people to keep their old
technology out there since they know that as soon as it is put up
against a real world network it will be shown for what it is.

A good example of this is eithernet, in the cabling area.
We started out with coax cable daisy chaining boxes via RG-59 or
62 o whatever it was. Then it all moved to 10 or 100 base T and
really for the same reason we have moved to a multi tier network.
That cable was a contention trap and if it was severed everything
down line from it was lost. At best it could only run as a CSMA
network and the effective throughput would drop rapidly as
more and more machines jumped on the cable.

We fast forward to 10baseT (100baseT giving basicly the same
results here) the initial devices that most people started working
with were hubs, these devices eliminated the cable break problem
you break the cable and you only drop one machine.

But you still have the "flat network issue like all the stations on 
145.01 or something like that. Now days they are selling you 
"switches" what does a switch do that a hub does not,? It handles
each link into it and when a box talks it can buffer and avoid the
colisions that were common on a hub, also if there was a collision
on a switch link the recovery takes place between the switch
and the machine talking to the switch not between the two machines
talking across the switch.

If we move all of our switches to LINUX we can, God forbid, have
not only X.25 networking along with IP, we can also have NR and
by implication a SEDAN node all out of the same box. We could
even with the LINUX FPAC stuff make the SEDAN people think
they had a great network path to other SEDAN sites, when it was
really the network in the back ground that was making it look good,
in actuality all we would be doing is hiding the warts on the toad a
little bit, though when it gets real busy on the SEDAN channel they
use on 2m those poor nodes are going to go deaf from all of the
noise. We all know about flat networks from past history in this state,
also one other point that in a sense burns me.

In one of the notes that was sent to me, the statement was that
they used SEDAN in GA, implying that in a sense because they use
SEDAN in GA we should do so here. That has always been a
issue I never handled very well, those who would always come 
from up north and say, "we don't do it this way up nawth" implying
that we were some sort of retrogrades or something similar,
my reply is if you do not like it go back up nawth. 

One of the problems of SEDAN is it was born out of a personal
difference between Buck Rogers and Tom Moulton/RATS. So
instead of keeping it at a personal level Buck tossed out the
baby with the water, he moved all of the old SEDAN network from
ROSE to X1J or whatever, and back to a old flat network. We had
differences with Moulton over how a switch should do certain
operations, and found FPAC which did what was needed and
got us away from the issues with Tom, but we kept the elegant
networking and have pressed on to better things WITHOUT
SACREFICING THE ELEGANT AND SIMPLE NETWORKING
CONCEPTS THAT WERE BORN OUT OF MOULTON AND
RATS WORK

SEDAN being a NetRom based network also has to be
managed but unlike the X.25 network you have to know
ALL about the network in order to set it up properly, and
if you allow it to "self configure" propagation artifacts will
drive you up a tree, and of course you end up setting up
a propagation horizion which based on experience of NEDA
up in New England is only about 4-6 nodes down stream
at which point you have to make another set of connections
on through to the next horizon node or if your destination is
in that propagation band to your destination.a

Wtih regards to the 500 byte limitation, I am in total agreement
with Bud, you can do that using other methods much easier.

Indeed I have the teeshirt with the bullet holes, having served
through 3 major earthquakes and a hurricane in Costa Rica
we found out that our multi-tier network was MUCH more
functional than the other network operations in the country,
the problem being that somebody is going to walk up to you
with a triage list to send and it "ain't gonna be 500 bytes long"
when you tell him "that exceeds the network limitation" there
goes your credability right down the tubes.

When you are handling traffic out of a earthquake area that
has been elevated 1 meter (confirmed by NASA with regards
to the April 1991 Limon Quake in Costa Rica) where rivers have
changed course or worse are flowing the oposite direction from
the original flow, and the ocean has receded from the original
shore over 300 feet (I was handling traffic at the airport and
the smell was really quite "wonderful" since the airport in LIMON
is built right along the beach) you are not worrying about 500
bye limitations, you are passing whateve traffic that is handed to
you, no questions asked. Your network has to be able to handle
whatever you toss at it, granted a image file might take a while
but we can do it. a 5 or 10k text file should not be rejected because
your network will barf on it.

I would like to help out on the shoot out, I do not know if I can get
up to TLH, and due to work demands my time is very limited but
I will be happy to do what I can, and also am going to try to influence
things here in Tampa as much as I can.

I have no complaint with SEDAN or any packet system operating
out of the EOC, just do not make that the only one allowed as you
have just cut off your head to pop a zit as far as I am concerned.

I am trying to get back on getting  LINUX FPAC switch up and
running if work and time permit, then it will  not matter as the
LINUX box can be a switch, node or whatever (I still do not like
to mix BBS and switch/node functions, but you can do that too
if you so desire. The neat thing is that if we get these things
converted over the FPAC LINUX any site that has a internet
connection can also be a land line path back to the EOC,
of course it is not radio, but in a emergency you DO WHAT
HAS TO BE DONE Like Bud said about the Win software, I
love LINUX but hey, you use what is at hand, and what you
can get up and running with a minimal impact on whatever you
are doing or working with/for (Bud have you got it handling
connections over the network yet? I will set one up on
my work Win2k machine and try it out, I may not like MS
but I ain't dumb.... Hats off to Win2k it is pretty stable, and
has not been burdened down with the issues of Win XP...)

The other neat thing about a LINUX switch site is of course
IP is native and the move between X.25 and IP is quite
easy, you can encapsulate one inside the other in order to
get the data to the far end whatever it is. We have done
that in the past and if they want to see links into the EOC
that is a nice clean way to do it, no radio to worry with,
just a IP address and off it goes pops out on the network
somewhere gets routed to it's destination and that is it.
Also another gain is that you can use 802.11b cards for
high speed links either IP or interswitch, take your pick.

So much for that, i am going to meet with the local guy
and see just how bad this is locally I did get a kick out of
some of the comments such as "the fadca system was
not a mature system, and he implied that you needed to
do special mods to get on the network, hey most of our
user channels are still 1200B. He also impled that you needed
to have special knowledge of the network, beyond knowing
the target call and X.121 addres what else do you need,
On a NetRom network if your target is beyond your horizon
you have to know how to connect to a node and then press
on and that can get real messy real fast. In truth they have
been really whitewashed, ohh yes, by the way I guess as
far as they are concerned the FADCA network only covers
a small amount of the state. I guess GA counts for more on
their end the the rest of the state the EOC is supposed to
serve.

-- 
Chuck Hast
KP4DJT
kp4djt@tampabay.rr.com
To paraphrase my flight instructor;
"the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my
going out and having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of
torn and twisted metal."