<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
Don, I agree with you on many fronts. I come from a radio background
and here in southern cal unless we fall into the sea nothing will take
out all of the communications here including ham because we are not in
low lying flat land and were too diversified, over 150 miles and as
many mountain top sites. <br>
BUT,<br>
let me tell you about how bad the southern CA. radio site owners are
becoming. We had a 4 day outage at a very large site where one of my
radios is located. None of them care anymore about backup power. This
happened this past week. We took up our own Generator because the site
owner (a national site company) won't maintain an old one. My friend
(a microwave isp ) fixed the site owners by adding oil and a new
battery. That will take us out!<br>
<br>
<br>
Don Fanning wrote:<br>
<blockquote
cite="midC9EFB5002530CC429B7D778CFA047C088047@warpcore.00100100.net"
type="cite">
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; ">
<meta content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2722" name="GENERATOR">
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">Time and time again, emergency
action drills take place in cities to target where their weaknesses are
in "crisis" handling. Usually they involve planes crashing or
explosions (mock of course). Obviously they were never prepared for
this sort of disaster in their recovery plan. I've participated in a
few ARES/RACES drills and have to say that much could be done to
improve upon the "HAM" infrastructure.</font></span></div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"></span> </div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">Most of the time, communications
is coordinated through 1 repeater system. When this repeater goes
down, of course people would switch comms to another but in a case like
this, where all the repeater systems go down except for maybe one,
there needs to be a better plan.</font></span></div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"></span> </div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">In Amateur Satellite Service,
these orbiting "Repeaters" employ a system called RUDAK where a chunk
of spectrum is repeated. Obviously this isn't feasible in terrestrial
repeaters but they do have the ability to turn off radios and switch
bands at will depending on operating conditions. With software
controlled radio and Asterisk, the repeater system could be made to be
more resilient to disaster by linking to other repeater systems via
radio where it could connect outward. </font></span></div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"></span> </div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">If you figure the overhead of a
repeater's transmitter and receiver plus the controller, replaceing the
controller with an asterisk based unit (integration) would make more
sense as it would give the repeater system much more capabilities in
the same footprint and power. Additionally, these repeater systems are
located on hilltops with other radio systems so they should have
emergency power available (if you've ever been to a hilltop repeater
site, you'll know what I mean). </font></span></div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"></span> </div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">I think the biggest thing that
hurts ham radio's ability to react to a crisis is the lack of equipment
and operators. Most of the traffic we pass is "Health and Welfare"
with "Logistics" being the second to it. What defeats this is that in
a disaster where local/high band long haul capabilities are diminished,
is simply the one repeater that is functional because everything is
squeezed onto one VHF/UHF repeater.</font></span></div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"></span> </div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">Where I could see thing being
improved? Installation of 802.11b/g WLAN under Part 97. It would
allow for more users into the system, there are less hardware and power
components and allows the system to be dynamically configured.
Asterisk could play a huge role then as it's made for IP based traffic
and could re-route in a split second.</font></span></div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"></span> </div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">-Don</font></span></div>
<div align="left" dir="ltr"><span class="367571720-11092005"></span> </div>
<br>
<div class="OutlookMessageHeader" align="left" dir="ltr" lang="en-us">
<hr tabindex="-1"><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com">asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com</a>
[<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com">mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Michael
D Schelin<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Saturday, September 10, 2005 10:20 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Asterisk-Users] civil emergency comms: Asterisk
+ HAM<br>
</font><br>
</div>
The two best forms of communications in a real disaster and one always
has been is #1 Ham radio. and #2 satellite telephone. Ham radio is
global and has proven time and time again to be the most reliable when
the infrastructer has been damaged. The U.S government is the biggest
user of satellite telephones which is also becoming a valuable tool
again when the communications infrastructure is down. It would be nice
If Asterisk could be used but in this case but it's useless. People
are displaced and most of the communications infrastructure for the
city is unusable. I don't mean all of the telco's systems. It's the
flood that wiped out most home and business systems. For us, The best
thing that a provider can do is to have redundant servers in different
cities. This should remind us all how fragile our lives are. <br>
<br>
Chris Travers wrote:<br>
<blockquote cite="mid43236F9E.6020005@metatrontech.com" type="cite"><br>
Mark Phillips wrote: <br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Hold on here folks, <br>
<br>
I'm guessing that the original poster of this thread isn't a member of
his local RAyNet team. <br>
<br>
Whilst I don't profess to be an expert at this I have been doing
emergency radio for quite some time and have seen service at the
Lockerbie bombing, Docklands bomb, Ground Zero (I'm sure I'm a
terrorist target y'know - they seem to follow me everywhere) and soon
I'll be in Louisiana. <br>
<br>
In all of these events the KISS principle must and does prevail. We
need a system that is a simple and energy efficient as possible. <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><br>
Building a network of * servers and Wi-Fi links is all very well but
how are you going to power them? <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
These are excellent points. I have a few interesting suggestions
here.... The first is that the only obstacle to any sort of
longer-range point to point line is merely power. This is true whether
you are talking HAM or fiberoptics. Note that if you have the power,
it would take disruption of the physical line to disrupt a fiber line.
Note that DirectNIC in New Orleans remained operational without *any*
downtime or loss of connectivity with the rest of the world. <br>
<br>
The suggestion that I have is for various areas to have dedicated civil
emergency com units with strategic reserves of fuel (3-4 weeks worth),
battery backups, etc. These units would have links (fiber, microwave,
and/or satellite, better to pick 2 of 3) to areas outside expected
disaster zones. Asterisk could then run across these links.
(Sattelite links would best be POTS-type). <br>
<br>
The point is to a disaster-tolerant communications infrastructure which
could then be used to to provide additional communications services to
the relief workers. With various point to point wireless capabilities,
it might be possible to use them to provide cell service to relief
workers etc through the installation of GSM microcells (which could be
brought in after the fact). <br>
<br>
See where I am going? <br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><br>
Generators require fuel which is always in short supply and batteries
die out quickly. Adding Ham Radio to the picture doesn't really add
much when you are trying to do something like a * network. The radio
gear just isn't designed to integrate with the * server. <br>
<br>
Ham radio is being used down in the Katrina affected area with great
results for both emergency and heath/welfare related traffic. They are
using both "phone" (that's when one talks in to the radio) and data
modes and can be heard all over the 75 and 40 meter bands here in the
US. <br>
<br>
Power for most of these stations comes from batteries they loot (with
Police approval) from abandoned cars or a combo of solar and batteries.
Many stations are only hear on the air after dark so that they can put
as much sunlight into their batteries as possible. <br>
<br>
Yes, electricity is available in some places either all day or across
the peak hours (allowing the workmen to restore power to other areas). <br>
<br>
Yes, there are radio to phone interconnects but these really are a
single phone to a single radio. Think of it as a cordless phone in that
the radio user can be anywhere within reach of the base station. <br>
<br>
Such technologies, whilst legal here in the US, may not be legal
elsewhere. When last at home (UK) I was not able to connect my radio to
the phone system by law (this may have changed recently - not been home
for 8 years). Many countries have such restrictions and as we saw
during the Tsunami, rules don't get relaxed just because there's a
panic on. <br>
<br>
Without question a phone system would be much better than a radio
station. As such I'll be taking a portable * server I've built, all the
IP hard phones I can find and 5 DirectTV style Internet systems. <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
How do IP hardphones work with satellite internet? I always thought
people had real trouble getting them to work at all..... <br>
<br>
Best Wishes, <br>
Chris Travers <br>
Metatron Tecnology Consulting <br>
<pre wrap=""><hr size="4" width="90%">
_______________________________________________
--Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com --
Asterisk-Users mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com">Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users">http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users</a>
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users">http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users</a></pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
<hr size="4" width="90%">
_______________________________________________
--Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com --
Asterisk-Users mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com">Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users">http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users</a>
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users">http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users</a></pre>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>