[FADCA] FACTS About WL2K

Sun Feb 28 16:31:19 EST 2010

Jerry,

I think your position would be better received if it had more accurate
facts:

Your quote: "** With WL2K, the Central Mail Servers (CMS) are a single point
of
failure.**"

Is simply incorrect and has been since about 2004.

Wl2K has 4 CMS servers in 3 continents any ONE of which can run the system.
With these redundant servers we have had virtually 100% uptime for the past
6  years.  There is no single point failure mechanism. The servers all run
identical code on dedicated Windows Server machines, are all in hardened
commercial facilities, with back up power and internet and report their
network status continuously. If a server fails, looses power, looses
internet, looses DNS it simply is automatically taken off line and the other
server(s) handle the load. The system is continually tested routing test
messages and reports between the servers and network administrators.

The WL2K system does not require any user to declare a "home bbs".  A
message (with true binary attachments) can be sent/received via any WL2K
portal:
	VHF/UHF Packet (including traversing through existing packet
networks like FPAC or ROSE)
	UHF D-star
	HF Pactor (1, 2, 3) 
	HF WINMOR (500, 1600 Hz) (WINMOR WL2K operation began testing in Jan
2010, now ~40 full time RMS WINMOR HF servers)
	Telnet
	Telnet via Satellite link

To ANY WL2K user or ANY internet mail.

WL2K has handles typically 90K message per month and has distributed nearly
10 million messages over the past 11 years. It has worked well and been
documented through many disasters and mercy missions through the past 11
years of operation. Both Amateur and MARS systems use the system
concurrently through different Radio servers.

Yes it is possible to send Email through any system ...Email uses a
standardized protocol available to all but the truth is few have taken the
effort seriously to design, implement, operate, and maintain an all
volunteer amateur radio email system such as WL2K.

You are more than welcome to design, build, deploy and maintain your own
system but in arguing for it or making comparisons you should use correct
facts and make the effort publish correct and unbiased information.

73,

Rick Muething, KN6KB
Winlink Development Team

-----Original Message-----
From: fadca-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:fadca-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of Jerald A DeLong
Sent: Sunday, February 28, 2010 3:39 PM
To: Florida Amateur Digital Communication Association
Subject: [FADCA] FACTS About WL2K

After taking some time today to carefully review the WL2K presentation
from the 2010 Orlando HamCation I note the following observation:

http://fadca.org/ecomm/wl2k_presentation_from_hamcation%202010.pps

E-Mail via HAM Radio - How do Hams do that.

According to this presentation "In oder to do email, it is necessary to
link to a WL2K RADIO MAIL Server (RMS) Station.

The fact of the matter is, this is not necessarily true at all and can
be accomplished in many way. HAMs have been doing this for many years
now without W2LK support.

In the mid 1980 this was done using KA9Q Nos or now know as Jnos/Tnos,
MFnos using Dos and Linux operating systems and still being done daily
on the AMPR Net. In later years it became much easier to do this using
native support found in Linux operating systems.

One such method of which would be well suited for the Florida layered
networks.

Currently most of the HAM RADIO Packet nodes in Florida are setup using
FPAC running on Linux operating system. Linux has native support for
sending and receiving email and/or SMTP and POP protocols. So with that
being said what are the true advantages of using our current FPAC node
to send and receive e-mail vs WL2K.

The first thing that comes to mind would be a true fault tolerant email
network. Each Internet connected node would **not** have to relay it's
email to a Central Mail Server (CMS) as WL2K calls it. Every node that
is Internet connected could send mail on it own cutting out the middle
man. This would be less prone to failure. If a node was unable to be
Internet connect or the Internet connection failed the mail could then
be proxies by one of the many nodes within it's own network. So every
node in the network is now a Central Mail Server.

A very simple concept to understand it how Internet email works that you
use every day.

** With WL2K, the Central Mail Servers (CMS) are a single point of
failure.**

Also lets not forget about the HF bandwidth that can be saved by
eliminating WL2K Pactor forwarding station that would not be needed by a
real MESHED fault tolerant email network.

WL2K could maybe used as a backup but surly not as a primary way of
transporting HAM Radio Email and building a true fault tolerant email
network. If this were the case you would see hundreds of company's
trying to do this commercially as redundancy to their corporate networks
and Internet email.     

Why reinvent the wheel? The entire Internet is currently setup this way
so why do we need special programs like WL2K to send HAM Radio email?

It is of my opinion that FADCA and many other HAM communities are easy
led a stray because there are not enough IT Professional LIKE MYSELF who
of which are building large scale network daily taking a stand and
setting the record straight.

For over 3 years now may FPAC node has been email enable via the
Internet, AMPR Net, and the Florida ROSE network being able to send and
receive email any where in the world without WL2K support.

http://fpac.kd4yal.ampr.org/squirrelmail/src/login.php

Jerry DeLong, MCSE 
KD4YAL

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