[ax25-layer2] IP Routing

[Robert Bruninga]

As everyone knows, I fully support limited
digipeating.  We are down to one-hop-and
2 hop enforced in several areas, and I fully
support  that.  But in sparse areas, where
there are fewer users than there are
digipeaters (New Mexico for example),
there is absolutely nothing wrong with
someone setting up a 3 hop path from point
A to point B to get his packets where he
needs at-that-instant-.  

As a spelunker, I also see the ability to
penetrate miles into a cave and by
leaving TNC digipeaters along the route,
I can use a 8 hop path to get my packets
back out through the mouth and to my
wife that I am still OK.

Hams play ham radio to see what can be done.
Therefore I always tend to want to let the
user define how he wants to communicate,
to meet his immediate need, not to be forced
into a one-solution-fits-all fixed application
defined by a local sysop who may not have 
the same view of ham radio as others have.

I FULLY support his freedom to set up such
a one-solution-fits-all application, and I 
WELCOME such innovation in ham radio.  
But let that solution be an option, and not
start-from-the-get-go with the intent to
prevent users from getting devices that
wont work in any way except the -one-
solution-fits-all system being touted.

Bob, WB4APR

>>> glennt at charter.net 09/20/05 10:40 AM >>>
Hi all!

Along with Bob WB4APR I have concerns about what we are proposing to 
do. It's fine to want to improve the layer-2 implementation, but we 
don't need to be destructive.

One of the real strengths in Amateur packet radio is that it thrives 
on chaos. Hams are, as a group, as independent as a hog on ice and 
most likely will want to ignore anything like a central authority, 
which is what a router in a hierarchical network is. Worse, from a 
practical standpoint, dependence on that local router provides a 
single point of failure, the router itself, that could isolate the 
hierarchical LAN or LANs from the rest of the world. This would not 
be a good thing.

Put another way, I'm not sure that limiting source routing to two 
hops is a good thing. Changing how it is structured to reduce its 
sensitivity to individual weak links, as is done in several packages, 
would be useful. This would tend to duplicate what's already been 
done by KAnode, theNet, netrom etc.

It seems that any change to the layer-2 protocol should result in a 
system that is at least as robust as the current system. I think this 
dictates a strict peer to peer topology rather than a hierarchical 
one. Let the hierarchy be defined at layer 3.

Given all of this, I'm not sure that there is a lot we can do to 
improve layer-2 beyond what is already in KISS. Flow control, while a 
welcome addition, is really a layer-1 issue. Adding it is simply a 
matter of updating the serial port driver in the KISS implementation. 
KISS that doesn't use a physical serial port doesn't have flow 
control as an issue - which is why flow control isn't a layer-2 issue.

73 de Glenn wb6w


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