Packet Radio rules & uses (was Re: [Linux-ham] Congrats!)

[Jeremy Portzer]

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On Tue, 2003-07-22 at 15:03, Magnus wrote:

> A lot of the personal email I get is encrypted, though, and from the=20
> little bit of reading I've done about the amateur regulations it sounds=20
> like this would be a forbidden use of the amateur spectrum. =20
> IP-over-Radio dramatically increases the likelihood that someone is=20
> sniffing your packets, though, and harvesting passwords and such.  If=20
> crypto is not an option, I don't know that IP-over-Radio is as=20
> attractive as it might sound on the surface.

You're absolutely right -- cryptography is not allowed because the whole
point is anyone SHOULD be able to listen in and find out what's going
on, and participate.  Unless you're looking for county-wide (statewide?=20
worldwide?) participation in your system administration, you should not
be running telnet over packet radio. :-)  Though last night, Tanner said
that he thinks running ssh with no cipher, but with encryption for the
authentication part, would be okay -- just as long as the actual data
traffic is in the clear.  Also remember that amateur radio is not for
business use... no commercial traffic is allowed.. you're not really
even supposed to order a pizza over the radio, since that's a business
transaction.

That said, there are some neat uses.  The Amutomatic Position Reporting
System, http://www.aprs.net/ , is a use of packet radio to automatically
update a web site with position information, which is fed into your
radio from a GPS receiver.  The location can then be looked up from a
web site or via other means.  Kevin (N8VNR) showed me this setup last
weekend -- it's pretty sweet.  With his setup, the radio can even report
other hams nearby, which it picks up with its packet radio/APRS
receiver, and then plot the location on the GPS receiver.  Besides being
cool, I could see how this would be useful in the various emergency
services applications that hams are involved in.
[Kevin, please interject if I'm getting any of this wrong!]

--Jeremy

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| Jeremy Portzer       jeremyp@pobox.com       trilug.org/~jeremy     |
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