Rick wrote: > The BBS concept (without the internet) was THE system in place for well > over a decade. We initially had worldwide packet HF BBS systems, however > they were less effective after the sunspots declined and the higher > bands became unusable. Packet does not work well on HF. It requires a > relatively high S/N ratio for any kind of throughput.
Well, it allowed access to information to those without Internet access, still a vast majority in the Third World. It was a way to know about operating events, DXpeditions, new developments, replacing the magazines or internet distributed bulletins we did not receive. Of course bad HF propagation affected it more than we would have wished. Also, a content control was needed to cope with the scarce bandwidth available. 7PLUS could be either a blessing or a nightmare at times. Once, I had a clash with a british net controller, which I regarded as "fascist" instantly, imposing a limit of 5 K per piece of mail sent to the british network. It happened that one of my users had sent a too large piece of e-mail. Later, when the VHF packet community here grew, I faced the same problems with ill adjusted, greedy parameters and resource deprived 286's that some of my users had, generating endless retry chains.... On packet, the ill chosen layer one is the responsible. I am quite sure that it would have been different with a better layer one, using a mixture of FEC/ARQ, as pactor does, and is available nowadays. It would increase latency, but also thruput would increase. Of course, it is too easy to be a prophet of the past... <snip> > These BBS's eventually were tied in to local VHF packet BBS systems so > that hams could send traffic worldwide although it could take days to > get through. Everything was done via amateur radio RF links for HF > although there were "wormholes" (practically speaking, the early > internet), that made big jumps to connect VHF packet. I had a good link to different Satellite Gateways at different times, and it worked well. A packet mail to Australia usually had a reply the following day. > When Pactor and Clover II became available, the BBS system moved to > these modes and renamed the system Winlink to include a MS Windows GUI > interface along with the two new modes providing the transport. Some of them only, I would say. I kept on using FBB while using pactor II for the forwarding links, a 10:1 improvement in thruput. These are some of my views, from my perspective, 73, Jose, CO2JA __________________________________________ Participe en Universidad 2008. 11 al 15 de febrero del 2008. Palacio de las Convenciones, Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba http://www.universidad2008.cu
