[nos-bbs] IP-over-ax25

[(Skip) K8RRA]

Hi Misko, there are some of us who use the easy part of your plan
regularly.

On Sun, 2008-09-28 at 12:28 +0200, Miroslav Skoric wrote:
> Hi group(s),
> 
> I plan to investigate the possibilities of using smtp mail clients 
> (Thunderbird or like) and http clients (Firefox or like) to approach 
> smtp and http services at the nearest academic (Internet) network. (At 
> the moment, I reach them by dial-up.)
Let's start here, and focus only on JNOS as the ham software with SMTP,
POP, and HTTP, services running on a Linux host.  Jnos can service a MUA
[Mail User Agent like Thunderbird] and browser [like Firefox] on that
specific host. Hooking these thing up to each other is quite straight
forward. Some of this configuration is recently added to
http://jnoswiki.no-ip.org/jnosd/SetPop as an example, and I'd be
interested to know how helpful you found the wiki to be for your needs.

On the host itself, it is not material how the host is connected to LAN,
or JNOS is connected to the remainder of AMPRnet.  Stack-to-stack is the
easy part of the project...

> 
> The idea is to use the following setup:
>>SNIP<<
> |---------- 1st LAN ---------|                  |-------- 2nd LAN -----|
> University IP + JNOS (Xrouter) --> VHF 1200 bps <-- JNOS + Windows/Linux
>   HTTP/POP3/SMTP servers                          HTTP/POP3/SMTP clients
What is above is the hard part of the project.  Rather than focus on
your network specifically, here are the tough nuts to crack:

Service access from any LAN host to JNOS on that same LAN is pretty
straight forward.  Gaining access to remote JNOS hosts is not.  Using
the static IP model we use locally, packets don't find a route back to
the originating LAN host.  I've tried using NAT feature of iptables but
was not successful [probably for my own lack of experience].  In simpler
terms:  any host [Linux, Windows, etc] with a MUA, or a browser, or
TELNET, can be serviced by the JNOS on that same LAN.  But to gain that
same service at the same host from a remote JNOS over 1200B RF requires
more homework.

Email dispatch thru the 44... network to a remote JNOS AMPRnet host is
pretty straight forward.  Email exchange beyond the remote 44... net
host -- say to a MTA on the second LAN or on Internet -- is not.  Here
again packet routing is a problem to support the end-to-end link, it
needs more homework.  In simpler terms: any host on the local LAN with a
MUA can SMTP/POP mail from JNOS on that same LAN, and JNOS can serve as
a MTA with another JNOS on any node supported by AMPR.net -- this
supports mail addressing like: call at call.ampr.org.  But to support the
more general addressing user at domain across the 44... network requires
more homework.

Is JNOS required?  I don't expect JNOS is the only option, but I can't
list the various non-JNOS software options that do work OK.

> 
> Is there any existing experience with such kind of ham/academic 
> activity? Any pointers and ideas are welcome.
I'm not expecting to be alone in responding to you.

> 
> Besides ham radio tests, I need something like that to experiment with 
> for the sake of my master studies. My professors asked me earlier to 
> make as many theoretical scientific papers and participate to technical 
> conferences as possible. But after my doing a lot of that, it seems they 
> are not much interested in ham radio anymore :-(  but prefer rather 
> WiMax, Skype and other commercial systems instead.

For eye candy, you might want to put the CONVERSE feature to work and
have several telnet sessions set up for instant messaging among various
hosts on multiple LANS linked by RF & ham radio.  It's a TCP link that
seems to show well.

> I hope that a kind of interconnection between TCPIP and AX25 worlds 
> might draw their attention again :-)

I for one applaud your intent to push the limits and install TCP/IP over
AX.25.

73
de [George (Skip) VerDuin] K8RRA k