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Enter Internet Radio Linking Project.
It has 1570 active nodes.

It's called IRLP. However, the primary purpose of ham radio is radio communications over bands ranging from medium waves through SHF.

On a broader note: it isn't just ham radio that will be affected, but also low band VHF users. And remember, if the signal leaks, it can also be interfered with.

The whole notion of stuffing broadband traffic over power lines has been tried and proven unworkable in many attempts on both sides of the Atlantic. Power lines were never designed to be balanced transmission lines such as a CAT 5 cable. They will radiate and they'll also pick up significant levels of short-wave signals. There has also been demonstrations that broadcast FM reception, and the new digital audio broadcasts will all be interfered with.

This is the very definition of insanity: It has been documented time and time again in many countries over several decades that sending broadband signals over power lines makes terrible RF noise and suffers from poor performance. And yet people continue to think that if they try it, that somehow it might work.

How can you not be excited when you have IRLP? The fusion of the internet and radio.

Not quite. IRLP allows a ham radio operators to talk to a repeater which talks to another repeater over the internet which in turn talks to another ham operator, but you can't tap into the internet side directly (not allowed by regulation, there is no technical problem with doing so).

You can also do ham radio over IP too!
http://www.irlp.net/

But for remote linking, a sat ISP is probably much better than HAM because HAM is regarded as a common medium. As a result, you have to "play nicely", and can't transmit questionable material over the airwaves. Lastly, in the US anyway...i don't know about operation procedures in foreign lands, but you can't conduct business transactions (like sell stuff) over HAM radio. You can however call for a tow truck if you're stranded in the middle of nowhere tho.

73s
KG6JOP

and google (with the quotes on): "radio over tcp" to geta bunch of data on this alternative way of acessing the InterNet :)

There is some recent salvation of Ham radio through the internet itself, believe it or not!

There are 2 new (relatively) systems called IRLP and another called EchoLink. These use the internet to link Ham repeater sites all over the world, using streaming audio (like "RealAudio") between stations.

There are nearly 1000 nodes in IRLP, my repeater uses that protocol, and I'm not sure but EchoLink probably has a similar number of nodes as well.

This is helping to unite Ham radio interests with those related to the internet. This is also providing new Hams, most of which are Technician class and have no "HF" or long-distance communications privileges, a means to talk outside of their local repeater area for a change.

Previously, operating on Field Day or going over to an "Elmer's" house and having him let you work the low bands was the only DX (long distance) exposure most new Hams would ever get. These new internet linking systems are helping to make that experince more readily available. Before the internet became popular, talking to someone in a strange and foreign land was a rare and exciting experience.

Especially when you consider such projects that combine both ham technology and the internet (voip) like echolink and irlp where they use Linux.

I'm a big fan wireless technology and it's one of the reason's that I just got my ham license. The old stigma of a bunch of old cranky guys on ham will be a thing of the past.

What do you want to do with it? If you want local conversations - maybe 70 mile radius range, a 2 meter rig using a good local repeater will put you in touch with the locals, maybe let you use IRLP for worldwide communications (not full coverage, but spots all over the world). Add 70cm (dual-banders are commonly insignificantly more than a single-bander) and you can operate remote bases, if anyone is offering one locally. If you want to be able to dabble in everything the service can do, go for one of the "do-all" rigs. I personally use a Yaesu FT-817, which gives me all bands up to 70cm except for 1-1/4 meters, all modes, but with a maximum output power of 5W. It lets me go battery power, and it was cheap for the coverage - USD650, and I heard they were selling them for USD500 at the Dayton HamVention this year. If you don't want to operate portable, you might prefer an FT-100, or the ICOM equivalent, the IC-706mkIIg, both 100W rigs with the capability of the FT-817.
That said, you don't really know whether you will actually enjoy it (don't discount the possibility, the world is riddled with never-active hams). Most of us would like for everybody to be in the hobby. <DIGRESSION> That was actually a theme of my senior comprehensive exams (required to graduate from Wabash). I was asked what I would do if I could do one thing for the world. My answer was to get as many people as possible active as hams in all countries, on the grounds that it is hard to go to war against someone you know personally. The internet actually realizes a small part of that vision, but it affords few opportunities for meeting someone you wouldn't have already sought out on your own. Hell, mostly now it's people emailing other people they already now... that, and looking at pr0n.</DIGRESSION> Seek out your local club. You need to find out when/where the exams are anyway. Let it be known that you're wanting to check it out, but are leery of committing large cash against an unknown. Chances are that if you do in fact follow up, learn, and get the license, someone will be able to loan you an HT to get on the repeater, maybe even an HF rig. Sometimes you'll get used to, and fall in love with, the rig, and want to buy it off the guy who lent it to you, and sometimes, that's part of what he's hoping for. Regardless, the big hope is to create another ham. Everyone wants you to succeed. Even if nobody has something to lend, the local club probably has a station. Dues are usually in the USD20/y range, and include access to whatever the club has - a station, autopatch on the repeater (it's cool to call somebody on the phone when nobody else can get a signal on their cell phones), remote base access... I don't know what's offered in your area.
Once you find your niche (and if you don't decide it's all bogus), you can start looking for the sort of equipment you want to own (or build), AND you'll know what you're looking for.
If you can't connect with a local community, just get a do-all rig and start fucking around.

Shortwave (better known as Worldband) is far from dead. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the mountains of Nicaragua from 1998-2000 and I was as addicted to SW in those days as I am to the internet today.

In remote sites and in poor countries where the internet is still basically another planet, the radio is still a regular and important source of news and information. Shortwave has certainly decreased in importance but it's by no means dead.

That said, there are new projects that may bring it back into vogue. Check out the Internet Radio Linking Project (http://www.irlp.net), which cuts the ionosphere out of the equation. Your voice is transmitted to a local node which feeds it into a VOIP receiver. The signal travels the rest of the way over the internet, and pops back out from another local node near the receiver. Much lower signal loss that way, and the infrastructure is already in place. They offer a modified Redhat solution you can pretty much drop into place on your Linux box. Of course, you still have to get your ham operator's license, but if you were thinking of transmitting you were responsible for doing that anyway.

But seriously, my experience is that this event as with most ham radio things has been dwindling over the years. Anyone else feel that way?

It's a shame too because the community spirit of the ham radio operators rivals that of the early days of the Internet. But the Internet has lost its spark (or at least it's friendliness) far faster than amatuer radio.

Its true that in many countries amateur radio licenses have started to fall in number... some blame "the internet" and others say that it's "young people" who have no interest anymore in technical hobbies. Hardly. I'm 24!

Amateur radio has changed as times go on. unable to put up big antennas in your back yard to work stations internationally? All you have to do is pick up your handheld radio and connect via a voice-over-IP gateway and talk all you want worldwide.

The UK's foundation license and Australia's proposed introductory license are trying to solve the problem we all seem to have of "no time for that". By making that first step into the hobby that much easier to get, more people are willing to give it a go.

It is a fun and rewarding hobby that goes well with computing as a hobby (a different level of geekdom?) or as a different technical hobby if you're stuck with computers all day at work...

The spark is still there! :-)

Gavin
VK6HGR

The IRLP system uses gpg for encryption and authentication to prevent rouge users from connecting and taking control of machines over the network. Several of these systems are located in remote locations and the operators maintain them over SSH. It is not likely that they will be upgraded anytime soon.

The project has moved forward since the beginning and released versions packaged with RH 7.1, 7.3, and 8.0.

For more information, check out www.irlp.net

IANAH (I am not a Ham) but...

How can this promote or invigorate amateur radio at all? I have had the opportunity to explore the world of amateur radio with friend's equipment and I believe I have a fair understanding of the prinicples involved, but I cannot for the life of me imagine any opportunities granted through the use of 802.11 that are not already available.

I have "played" with Shortwave on a 15-25(I forget) meter antena and spoken to the Ukraine, it was crap and barely destinguishable. I have also "played" with the IRLP (a project I would have expected /. to embrace ages ago, since it is bringing new people to Linux daily by providing an actuall use for average pc users) and found quite the opposite. On a little mobile car radio I was able to speak clearly to the UK and Australia as though I was using a really high quality cell phone service.

So what exactly does this project do to "reinvent" Amateur Radio that is in any way more attractic/effective/efficient/etc. than the IRLP which has already been around for years and has relays now all over the world?

Hi David,
There is actually an older program named Speak Freely. I've used it for a number of years and still love it. It runs on *BSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows and probably others. The windows version has a pretty well designed GUI, but the Unix version is CLI based. It comes with two GUI interfaces in the source's CONTRIB dir which are written in TCL. It has a number of encryption modes (4 I think) including using PGP to do the encryption. It also has many audio compression modes making it suitable for anything from High Bandwidth applications all the way down to a 2400bps modem (Really!). The codecs are GSM, ADPCM, LPC, LPC-10, and Simple. Simple just drops certian bits and can be mixed with any other codec. You can run it with out audio compression as well. If you're a fan of amateur radio, this program runs the links of the IRLP project. Very cool stuff.

My personal favorite way to run it is to have my linux box run a reflector and then have people connect to that and that way I can have multiple people in my conversation. The program is due for a bit of an update, anyone want to volenteer? (I looked at the TODO list and it's all beyond what I can do...)

--Josh