Joop Stakenborg wrote:
Some of the hams in Debian feel that Qtel has nothing to do with Amateur Radio, e.g. there is no radio-transmission involved. That's also the reason for me to not invest time in it.
You can CALL an RF link with it... that's kinda the whole point, although a lot of hams use VoIP ham tools as if they were Yahoo or AOL voice chat or something...
But calling an RF link from somewhere that has good IP connectivity, but has bad RF coverage for repeaters, etc... is useful sometimes.
Just thoughts...I think the "perception" of it not being RF-related is wrong... but I can see why some folks would think that, the way the systems get used sometimes...
We have a communications trailer that has satellite-based IP, very low latency, and we've put EchoLink and IRLP through it... it works, with some obvious delays getting to geosynch and back... but we can park that trailer just about anywhere, and then have it linked to the repeaters needed, if the various ISP's are up inbetween. Full IP connectivity is never a "given" in an emergency, so we have lots of other options in the trailer, including high masts and link radios pre-configured for various things, etc... but the Internet is pretty core these days, and it usually still works due to the "semi-redundant" nature of just about everything ISP's install these days. If the problem is at their head-end or their upstream backbone links, we KNOW someone is rolling in a truck to go fix it... just a matter of "how long"?
It's nice to have the VoIP option, because we can justify having that satellite link paid for as well as use it to "share" that IP connectivity with folks in public safety jobs in the area of the communications trailer with an 802.11 AP, and also do things like hand them a cordless phone that works for a real phone call via a VoIP-telephony provider (us, actually... Asterisk at a hardended data center, so we have control over the reliability as much as humanly possible on the Internet at large).
Having the option of some of this stuff pre-packaged for a "good" Linux distro like Debian to base things off of, would only make our arguments to get people off of Windows machines and to learn something new, even stronger...
The world's IP-based. The hams are behind. Might as well not be. (GRIN) Nate WY0X