amateur packet radio

    (PR) The use of packet radio by amateurs to
   communicate between computers.  PR is a complete amateur radio
   computer network with "digipeaters" (relays), mailboxes (BBS)
   and other special nodes.

   In Germany, it is on HF, say, 2m (300 and 1200 BPS), 70cm
   (1200 to 9600 BPS), 23cm (normally 9600 BPS and up, currently
   most links between digipeaters) and higher frequencies.  There
   is a KW (short wave) Packet Radio at 300 BPS, too.

   Satellites with OSCAR (Orbiting Sattelite Carring Amateur
   Radio) transponders (mostly attached to commercial satellites
   by the AMateur SATellite (AMSAT) group) carry Packet Radio
   mailboxes or digipeaters.

   There are both on-line and off-line services on the packet
   radio network: You can send electronic mail, read bulletins,
   chat, transfer files, connect to on-line DX-Clusters (DX=far
   distance) to catch notes typed in by other HAMs about the
   hottest international KW connections currently coming up (so
   you can pile up).

   PR uses AX.25 (an X.25 derivative) as its transport
   layer and sometimes even TCP/IP is transmitted over AX.25.
   AX.25 is like X.25 but the adressing uses HAM "calls" like
   "DG8MGV".

   There are special "wormholes" all over the world which
   "tunnel" amateur radio traffic through the Internet to
   forward mail.  Sometimes mails travels over satelites.
   Normally amateur satellites have strange orbits, however the
   mail forwarding or mailbox satellites have very predictable
   orbits.  Some wormholes allow HAMs to bridge from Internet to
   AMPR-NET, e.g. db0fho.ampr.org or
   db0fho.et-inf.fho-emden.de, but only if you are registered
   HAM.

   Because amateur radio is not for profit, it must not be
   interconnected to the Internet but it may be connected
   through the Internet.  All people on the (completely free)
   amateur radio net must be licensed radio amateurs and must
   have a "call" which is unique all over the world.

   There is a special domain AMPR.ORG (44.*.*.*) for amateur
   radio reserved in the IP space.  This domain is split between
   countries, which can further subdivide it.  For example
   44.130.*.* is Germany, 44.130.58.* is Augsburg (in Bavaria),
   and 44.130.58.20 is dg8mgv.ampr.org (you may verify this with
   nslookup).

   Mail transport is only one aspect of packet radio.  You can
   talk interactively (as in chat), read files, or play silly
   games built in the Packet Radio software.  Usually you can use
   the autorouter to let the digipeater network find a path to
   the station you want.  However there are many (sometimes
   software incompatible) digipeaters out there, which the router
   cannot use.  Paths over 1000 km are unlikely to be useable for
   real-time communication and long paths can introduce
   significant delay times (answer latency).

   Other uses of amateur radio for computer communication include
   RTTY (baudot), AMTOR, PACTOR, and CLOVER.

   <A huge hamradio archive>.

   Usenet newsgroup: <news:rec.radio.amateur.packet>.

   (2001-05-12)