[FADCA] Re: Fw: <No Subject>

[fadca@mailman.qth.net]

My comments below.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Billy Williams [mailto:n4uf@nofars.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 11:48 AM
> To: oderr@bellsouth.net
> Cc: Jeff Reynolds; Rick Muething KN6KB; Vern Ferris; Bud 
> Thompson; David
> Elmore; Larry Filzen; Bill Neylans; FADCA; Rudy Hubbard; Frank Butler
> Subject: [FADCA] Re: Fw: <No Subject>
> 
> 
> Thanks Russ for the demo.  Each emergency situation is 
> different and the more 
> tools that we have, the better.
> 
> For transferring large volumes of info quickly in a situation where 
> the "infrastructure" is largely in tact--TelPac seems like a 
> great way to go
> 
> I can see problems if the telephone system and/or Internet 
> become overloaded.  
> While SEDAN and other packets modes may be slower, they seem 
> to rely less on 
> the "infrastructure."

What is the difference between the loss of a tower or
towers with FPAC switches and the loss of the same
towers if they are SEDAN nodes? You just lost your path
regardless.

Now if you had said HF rather than SEDAN I would agree,
but I can see no difference between the loss either
site. They key is long haul low speeds links for those
cases where the regular network has been lost. And of
course if the state EOC would handle more than SEDAN
we would have other RF paths into there, but that is
another fish to fry.

> 
> Thanks to all who have contributed their time and talents to 
> develop this 
> option which could be of assistance in a communications 
> emergency.  Served 
> agencies should consider the benefits this system has to 
> offer along with other 
> systems that might provide an alternative in case of severe 
> infrastructure 
> damage.
> 

What was shown Saturday at Orlando was a combination
of HF and layered network operations, if the layered
network goes away we still have HF to fall back on,
how much better can you get than that?

Honestly the EOC should have a HF access port and the
rest of it should be secondary. If you had HF then you
have your direct link 'in' meeting your needs.

What is being developed is a two pronged path, one a
reliable robust layered network with some good network
administration tools, and simple access, allowing for
reasonable amounts of data to be moved either to access
points on the wired network to over RF to a final destination.
And at the same time the other prong of the fork goes
down the HF path which may either terminate at a internet
gateway or a local facility at, in this example the EOC.

Having done a lot of HF in the past, in many ways the HF
facility gets my vote first, because ALL of the infrastructure
is on each end and the bit in between is the ionosphere.
How much less infrastructure do you need than that? PacTor
can support speeds that would allow you to pass reasonable
amounts of traffic, and if you had several HF machines
and set up some sort of parallel system you could actually
move a good impressive amount of traffic across such a
system. Add some sort of automatic link quality analysis
and establishment system and it would indeed be impressive.

I am sorry but I do not buy SEDAN as being less infrastructure,
no way! Maybe less equipment, but that also is another
story.

Just my $0.02 worth. 


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