Help Deciding What You Need
Recently, I got a nice email from Bill Dornbush, AA6BD, over in Chattanooga, asking about building a packet radio network. He already uses packet for APRS and Winlink, but he and some of his friends want to do more with it, perhaps building a network. But, which flavor of network should they build, and – more importantly – why?
Why, indeed. In fact, that cuts directly to the most important issue here: What, exactly, do you want to do with your network? That answer will mostly dictate what kind of network you should build. But Bill is asking me what he can do with a packet network, so let’s start there.
Thinking about what a network might be good for, the first thing that comes to mind is email. A Bulletin Board System (BBS) is an email server, and there are many packet BBS applications available. But I’m not speaking of email in the sense of “anywhere there is internet coverage”, but in the sense “a nice platform for the locals to trade messages.” I send these columns up to CQ by email, but I doubt there is a packet network that can move a multi-megabyte message from Atlanta up to Long Island. Clearly, the internet is my only option for large messages over great distances.
“Using non-amateur methods for playing amateur radio is counterproductive.”
On the other hand, Winlink actually does this. Maybe not really
