Re: [digitalradio] HF-to-HF direct relay, and HF SMTP email
Rick W. wrote: I would have to say that your belief that there is some tone in my message is unwarranted. Not going to debate this. I'll just say I read your reply to someone else's question/comment first without knowing who it was and wondered what the deal was. But since you are sincere and have no agenda, we can proceed! For the record, I did not find an explanation of the Pilot station on the web site where one would think it would be clearly explained and I appreciated your clearing this up. This is a fair question, and one we have not made a big deal about. We needed something to call the stations that committed to being available 24x7. They are not just PMBO's, or BBS's, as their intended function is more than that. (Though they serve that role as well) I do not share the view that having multiple networks is necessarily good if that makes things more complex (increases the potential for failure). Again, like it or not, WL2K is the prevalent ham radio messaging system in use right now. In an emergency, there is a very high probability that the people you will need to swap email with will be on WL2K. It's also an advantage just to be able to send to a callsign, no other routing needed. Ignoring this factor isolates a new technology and makes it doomed to failure just like some of the pre-TCP-IP/SMTP mail networks. Build a bridge, interoperate, and value is added. It also makes sense to have traditional SMTP capability without depending on the WL2K network. Both for availability and independence reasons. These networks do fail and they sometimes have long delivery times, but the promoters tend to gloss over such information and make it sound like there is 100% up time. There up time is very good, but nothing is perfect. Delivery time in the modern email world is pretty quick. If you are seeing long delivery times in WL2K it has to do with how you connect. They made a design choice which makes sense for HF that add's a nuance. Your mail is not kept on every pmbo/server. It moves to the one you last connected to. Connect to a new one, and it may be a few minutes before it is sync'd there. There are valid mail store design issues involved in this approach. The design changed a bit with the implementation of the WL2K CMS's, which do tend to stay in sync, but the I believe the concept is the same. You clearly cannot keep everyone's mail on every server, you end up with a giant synchronization issue. Huge bandwidth and expense trying to keep large message stores in sync when geographically dispersed like the WL2K servers (properly) are. If I send a message with one system and the message does not go through, then I suppose I could try another system as an alternative. But would I even know that there is a problem? Probably not until much later, and by then (hours later) the message that was bottlenecked, may be finally getting through. If you get a message ID, the message was sent. If you did not, you can resend or try alternates. You have the same level of confirmation that you do with your traditional ISP email client. There is no guarantee that the message was delivered, just that it was accepted by the server. You did not mention it, but isn't the main value of using the Winlink 2000 systems is the ability to route traffic through many different methods, primarily internet, but also VHF and HF and find the recipient at any point in the system, even if they change location? Just like having web based e-mail vs. fixed ISP e-mail. No other system has this feature. WL2K discussion tends to be very polarizing, even in this group. People tend to lump WL2K in with Pactor, when in fact one can be used and has value without the other. So I don't promote WL2K extensively as it's heavily promoted in other areas. Based on past threads, my belief is that users of this group already have an opinion formed, valid or not, about WL2K. So I don't revisit. Ham's either understand or they don't. But your point is valid, and one of the reasons we see interoperation with WL2K as critical. He had trouble connecting but later in the day was eventually able to do it and I received duplicate messages just short of an hour after he sent them. Not too bad for time, although this was a one line message. He was able to use the ARQ mode and should have been able to send a much longer message. There have been changes in how to use the multi-line ARQ modes for messaging. It's not a capability we have promoted widely as we are still tuning to align the tool's capabilities (PC-ALE/MARS-ALE) with the messaging needs. The challenging issue is that DBM/DTM was really designed to behave like a serial stream, even though in PC-ALE it looks like a block text transfer. So we are having to come up with an approach to delineate the end of a message, as the protocol does not allow for that intrinsically. We are not clear on whether this is an implementation
Re: [digitalradio] HF-to-HF direct relay, and HF SMTP email
Questions: I have often wondered why they are called pilot stations. That sounds like they are the early experimental ones? Or does that mean something else? What is the real difference between using SMTP vs Winlink 2000's network? What does it mean for the users? It would seem that going through the HFLink system and then the Winlink 2000 system would add unnecessary layers of complexity to a very complex system and internet routing. What does it mean when you say according to the needs and availability of the resource? 73, Rick, KV9U expeditionradio wrote: Hi Jeff, The HFN Pilot Stations (Global ALE High Frequency Network) provide HF-to-HF relay of text messages, Winlink two-way text email, as well as SMTP outgoing-only text email, and control-op keyboarding. It is up to the originating operator to pick which method to use, according to the needs and availability of the resource. Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA
Re: [digitalradio] HF-to-HF direct relay, and HF SMTP email
Hello Rick, Your tone makes me suspect this is yet another attack on a system you do not understand or care for, but I'll assume your questions are sincere and try to answer them. :-) I have often wondered why they are called pilot stations. That sounds like they are the early experimental ones? Or does that mean something else? We also used the term anchor stations. Pilot as in guide. Known functional, debugged, available on published frequencies, with operators committed to helping new stations work out kinks in their setup. One of the biggest issues with new digital modes is for people to have a known good station to test against. I've fought this with friends, where you don't know if either of you have it right. ALE usage on ham bands really took off once we had stations available for connect 24x7. I know from past posts you do not believe this, but I see the activity and new stations every week. No deep dark science, the pilot stations idea came out of a conversation Bonnie and I had when I commented it was much easier to get an ALE station running on MARS since there were multiple stations available 7x24. We agreed we needed this for the ham side, kicked around some concepts, and the Pilot station approach was born. For what it's worth, anyone wanting to be a pilot station has to meet several criteria including: History of 7x24 availability, multi-band capability, commitment to participate for N months, Internet access, etc. They also happen to be messaging/bbslink backends and are part of our core infrastructure. Unlike some other messaging systems, we operate on common frequencies. We've also focused on obtaining geographic coverage. Right now we have very good coverage of N/Central America 7x24. We don't need 14 pilot stations in 4 or 6 land, etc. We are actively looking for stations to come on in EU, AP, S America, Africa, etc. There are hams active on ALE in these areas, but other than OZ and HK none have made the commitment to be a pilot station. What is the real difference between using SMTP vs Winlink 2000's network? What does it mean for the users? 1) Redundancy. You can route messages directly via the internet, or via winlink. ISP's can have outages, etc. Redundancy is always good 2) Like it or not, winlink is the defacto emergency messaging system for most hams, and certainly for MARS. So having WL2K inter operation was important, and it allows non-pactor stations to communicate with the EOC's, etc. 3) Like it or not, the WL2K infrastructure is a known, defined, and functional messaging system built around the ham BBS paradigm. At it's heart is the same W0RLI/F6FBB BBS interface, and it's easy to interface to It would seem that going through the HFLink system and then the Winlink 2000 system would add unnecessary layers of complexity to a very complex system and internet routing. See above. Multiple network paths and inter operation/bridges are a good thing. They add no complexity to the users. Accessing the WL2K messaging infrastructure is no more complicated than sending via SMTP, and a very large percentage of the ham HF email userbase is active on WL2K. What does it mean when you say according to the needs and availability of the resource? There were several design objectives to the HFLink MARS ALE bbslink system: 1) Support of HW ALE radios. They are pretty much locked out of pactor, multi-line messaging, etc. You can send, receive, list, delete messages from a HW ALE radio over ALE/BBSlink 2) Some radios/software do not have DBM/DTM capability. Some controllers have it, but it's not quite right in terms of compatibility. So again, we support AMD as a least common denominator while extending into DBM, then HW TNC modes, and ultimately the full suite of mil protocols. On MARS we will extend into the high speed modems as well since they are legal there. 3) Sometimes you need a single line, sometimes more. AMD works great, is available to pretty much all HF ALE stations. We still use it quite a bit even though the multiline modes are available. Have fun Alan km4ba / afa2ns
Re: [digitalradio] HF-to-HF direct relay, and HF SMTP email
Alan, I would have to say that your belief that there is some tone in my message is unwarranted. Everything that I comment on is hopefully as transparent as possible. It is true that many of us don't care for some of the puff and exaggeration that is sometimes promoted. But I know that in talking with you in the past, your responses seem very reasonable and knowledge based. I probably understand the system at least as well as most digital hams and have asked many, many questions, some of them privately. How you can somehow view this as an attack seems over the top, especially for you. (For some others in your group, anything that is not glowing support is viewed as being negative). For the record, I did not find an explanation of the Pilot station on the web site where one would think it would be clearly explained and I appreciated your clearing this up. I do not share the view that having multiple networks is necessarily good if that makes things more complex (increases the potential for failure). These networks do fail and they sometimes have long delivery times, but the promoters tend to gloss over such information and make it sound like there is 100% up time. There up time is very good, but nothing is perfect. If I send a message with one system and the message does not go through, then I suppose I could try another system as an alternative. But would I even know that there is a problem? Probably not until much later, and by then (hours later) the message that was bottlenecked, may be finally getting through. You did not mention it, but isn't the main value of using the Winlink 2000 systems is the ability to route traffic through many different methods, primarily internet, but also VHF and HF and find the recipient at any point in the system, even if they change location? Just like having web based e-mail vs. fixed ISP e-mail. No other system has this feature. By the way, another ham and I have tried to use the HFLink system recently. He had trouble connecting but later in the day was eventually able to do it and I received duplicate messages just short of an hour after he sent them. Not too bad for time, although this was a one line message. He was able to use the ARQ mode and should have been able to send a much longer message. I also tried to connect with several of the Pilot stations, but no luck so far. I have been able to do this in the past. I sincerely believe that it is vital to have many available stations so that you have redundant NVIS coverage as well as longer skywave propagation for those more isolated areas or due to conditions at that moment. Otherwise you wind up being like existing systems which could be very difficult to connect to when you need HF connectivity. Especially if you have an emergency station operating on lower power with mediocre antennas! Many of us are surely impressed with the tremendous dedication it takes to set up and maintain a 24/7 operation. I know that I appreciate this very much. Few hams operate digital modes, but almost none will take on that kind of responsibility. For example, some of us have considered a Winlink 2000 Telpac (Packet RMS) at one time, but did not do it. Setting up an HF system that is constantly monitoring many frequencies on different bands and can suddenly start transmitting at any time, means that personal operation may have to curtailed. One local ham had an experimental Telpac for a while but eventually felt that having a Linux based IRLP node might be better for more practical use. I really don't see much happening in our area with Winlink 2000 on HF, but I know that some hams in the Section do use it for VHF. The tremendous advantage that HFLink has is the sound card access and Winlink 2000 does not. It is that simple. They do not compete since HF Winlink 2000 is simply not available to 99% of hams and HFLink is available to at least a few percent which would include nearly all of us on a group such as this one that has radio amateurs who are interested in digital modes, even if not necessarily emergency use today (but there is always tomorrow:) I knew that you were planning to go to a full blown e-mail messaging system, but either this has not been promoted by your group (which seems unlikely) or I completely missed it. I am not sure how you use these different modes: AMD, DTM, and DBM, or why, but is this automatically done when you connect depending upon the size of the message and whether you have certain kinds of software? I have standardized on Multipsk for any ALE/FAE operation. Does this software work transparently to set up the correct modes? 73, Rick, KV9U Alan Barrow wrote: Hello Rick, Your tone makes me suspect this is yet another attack on a system you do not understand or care for, but I'll assume your questions are sincere and try to answer them. :-) I have often wondered why they are called pilot stations. That sounds
