As Jean Paul Roubelat explains in the FBB docs, the design of FBB B1 compression had to comply with a requisite from the french authorities, by which message headers must be sent in clear text.
But compression gives a measure of efficiency and allow to double the traffic or reduce the channel occupancy to at least 50% with the typical message text contents. The B1 protocol also allowed Z modem style transfers with resume. That is not trivial, since it allows a more efficient operation with limited duration band openings. The Winlink B2 protocol adds the capability to handle RFC-822 headers to the B1 protocol. Compression is not encryption. The FBB source is is free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. I wouldn't be too surprised to read one day that the Sureté Francaise has been able to read at least the B1 protocol... FBB also could incorporate message filters that allowed the sysop a considerable peace of mind, and it also could hold for inspection all bulletins and locally generated messages, if the sysop so wanted. 73, Jose, CO2JA --- Rick wrote: > Of course traffic going through your station has to be read or it would > not have a purpose, but one of the "selling points" that the Winlink > 2000 folks claimed in the past, was that because of the compression it > made it virtually impossible to anyone to monitor the traffic. One other > ham claimed to have written a fix for that but then I never heard > anything further on that. > > The problem is that some people are using ham radio for commercial > purposes when they use e-mail and even if we had a Pactor modem and > monitored, we would not be able to determine the traffic content. The > Winlink 2000 administrator does some spot checking of traffic, after the > fact, and has said that they do find abuses and shut off access for > those individuals. > > I suppose what constitutes commercial traffic might vary some from > individual to individual, but I would not use it for any business > transactions, stock market quotations or buying and selling, that sort > of thing. I can see where it would be nice to use for sending messages > to relatives and friends if I was traveling, but this can only be > available for very few people. > > As you know, I think that we need better, faster, and spectrum > conserving sound card modes. But as time goes on, if this was made > available, we would likely see an explosion in the use of the automatic > servers to support this desire. Ironically, the requirement of Pactor 2 > and 3, actually drastically limits the number of people who would use > the servers. But that could change with very low cost access. > > The one thing that could change with low cost access, is that it also > means more low cost monitoring capabilities and as long as there was not > some kind of compression scheme that made it impossible to read the > mail, then there would be a lot less abuse because those of us who > monitor a lot would be able to forward actual text to the FCC for any > violators. I expect that there would not be that many with an openly > monitored system. > > 73, > > Rick, KV9U > > > John Becker, WØJAB wrote: >> in and out of this station yes. >> Off the air traffic, some but not all. >> As you may know it's compressed. >> >> John, W0JAB __________________________________________ Participe en Universidad 2008. 11 al 15 de febrero del 2008. Palacio de las Convenciones, Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba http://www.universidad2008.cu
