My point here is that I do not see a reason why public transportation systems still rely on decades-old, non-encrypted technology. With ATC, it's a trivial matter of ordering a handheld on-line that is capable of transmitting on all ATC freqs. Agencies that continue to rely on antiquated systems deserve part of the blame.
The reason aircraft communications rely on non-encrypted, AM radio is every aircraft in the world needs the ability to talk to every other aircraft and every tower in the world. The existing radio system is simple and works with radios installed in planes that have been in service for decades. It is the same with Marine radio, every craft in the world can talk with every other craft and Coast Guard station because the radio system is simple and open. Unless we stop allowing private pilots and captains, the equipment has to be available to everyone, so even if we did convince everyone in the world to switch to a new system, you would still be able to order a radio on-line that would work with the new system.
Public transportation agencies, and private transportation companies, could switch to something more complex for internal use, and/\/\otorola would love it if they did, but it would be an expensive solution to a small problem. If they share infrastructure (like railroad tracks), they would also likely have to continue using and maintaining their existing equipment to communicate with other users of the infrastructure.
--Rich
You can set up an IRC server with Pidgin (or other) clients, then firewall access to any external servers. You then have the option of running customized bots, having common chat rooms, and person to person chats.
We used this for internal communications in the networking group where I used to work. It had the added benefit of having a client that worked on a text Linux console in the server room. Of course the only bot we ran was one that interjected comments about local restaurants when we were deciding where to eat lunch.;)
It's VHF, not UHF, but you can use mobile radios, detachable antennas, gain antennas, etc. that are not allowed on FRS. You are limited to two watts out the back of the radio, with whatever antenna you want. There is lots of MURS capable equipment available surplus on eBay, etc., since the five frequencies were previously business band.
In my opinion, it's really what truckers should be using for truck to truck and truck to dock communications. Unfortunately, the industry has put a lot money and marketing into FRS/GMRS and they don't want to confuse the consumer by having MURS radios next to FRS/GMRS radios. There are very few "bubble pack" MURS radios available, and they tend to be much more expensive than FRS radios. The funny thing is there used to be "bubble pack" radios for these frequencies before they were MURS. The frequencies are the old "blue dot" and "green dot" frequencies, plus some others, that were commonly available through contractor supply stores, etc.
While I agree that UHF CB would be nice, there is already so much UHF traffic in the US that it isn't feasible. The UHF commercial band is so crowded that in many metropolitan areas, the FCC has reallocated frequencies normally used for UHF TV channel 14 for public safety use. The only reason FRS/GMRS exists is because it is limited to very low wattage. The frequencies are in between existing business band frequencies and any more power would disrupt licensed business communications on adjacent channels.
In some places this is against the law. I know where I live you are not allowed to put out your garbage until after 4pm the night before pick-up. Obviously enforcement of this is not consistent. I've seen people randomly get notices on their doors about this, and then there's other neighborhoods where the cans basically sit out all week long instead of being carted back and forth from house to curb.
The reason enforcement is not consistent is they rely on you to narc on your neighbors. Where I used to live, we had an unknown neighbor that would call on just about anything, but a neighbor around the corner would leave a trash can out continuously so nobody could park in front of their house and never get a notice. (For all I know, they were the ones calling on everyone else.)
You bring up some good points. My machine is hardly ever off-line, it reconnects whenever is gets disconnected. Quite often, I keep the same IP for weeks at a time. I have my TTL set to an hour, so caching is less of a problem. I can update my primary DNS as often as I want, and dyndns.org only locks you out if you update with the same IP (they don't want the extra load). All in all, I'm very happy with my setup. My biggest problem is all the e-mail that my system has to bounce because everyone uses bogus addresses at my domain when they fill in forms that require e-mail addresses;) --Rich
Running services from a dynamic IP works fine. I have Pacific Bell DSL and I got it just after they stopped doing single static IPs, so I got stuck with a dynamic.
I use qmail for mail and apache with mod_ssl for web service. (Yes, that's really my domain name.) I have several NameVirtualHosts defined for apache (my home page is the same machine), so I have to restart apache whenever I get a new IP. No big deal. I have my domain name pointing to a friends nameserver. The nameserver is updated whenever I get a new IP using Bind 8's dynamic updating features and public key authentication. I havn't had any problems so far.
If you don't have a friend that runs a nameserver, I also have it update my dyndns.org entry and that doesn't seem to have any problems either. All in all, I'm happy with it, and with Bind 8's dynamic updating, having a static IP isn't so crucial any more.
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> Are we seriously understaffed, or is this normal?
Yes, you are seriously understaffed, and yes, this is normal.
My point here is that I do not see a reason why public transportation systems still rely on decades-old, non-encrypted technology. With ATC, it's a trivial matter of ordering a handheld on-line that is capable of transmitting on all ATC freqs. Agencies that continue to rely on antiquated systems deserve part of the blame.
The reason aircraft communications rely on non-encrypted, AM radio is every aircraft in the world needs the ability to talk to every other aircraft and every tower in the world. The existing radio system is simple and works with radios installed in planes that have been in service for decades. It is the same with Marine radio, every craft in the world can talk with every other craft and Coast Guard station because the radio system is simple and open. Unless we stop allowing private pilots and captains, the equipment has to be available to everyone, so even if we did convince everyone in the world to switch to a new system, you would still be able to order a radio on-line that would work with the new system. Public transportation agencies, and private transportation companies, could switch to something more complex for internal use, and /\/\otorola would love it if they did, but it would be an expensive solution to a small problem. If they share infrastructure (like railroad tracks), they would also likely have to continue using and maintaining their existing equipment to communicate with other users of the infrastructure.
--Rich
You can set up an IRC server with Pidgin (or other) clients, then firewall access to any external servers. You then have the option of running customized bots, having common chat rooms, and person to person chats.
We used this for internal communications in the networking group where I used to work. It had the added benefit of having a client that worked on a text Linux console in the server room. Of course the only bot we ran was one that interjected comments about local restaurants when we were deciding where to eat lunch. ;)
Have you looked into MURS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-Use_Radio_Service
It's VHF, not UHF, but you can use mobile radios, detachable antennas, gain antennas, etc. that are not allowed on FRS. You are limited to two watts out the back of the radio, with whatever antenna you want. There is lots of MURS capable equipment available surplus on eBay, etc., since the five frequencies were previously business band.
In my opinion, it's really what truckers should be using for truck to truck and truck to dock communications. Unfortunately, the industry has put a lot money and marketing into FRS/GMRS and they don't want to confuse the consumer by having MURS radios next to FRS/GMRS radios. There are very few "bubble pack" MURS radios available, and they tend to be much more expensive than FRS radios. The funny thing is there used to be "bubble pack" radios for these frequencies before they were MURS. The frequencies are the old "blue dot" and "green dot" frequencies, plus some others, that were commonly available through contractor supply stores, etc.
While I agree that UHF CB would be nice, there is already so much UHF traffic in the US that it isn't feasible. The UHF commercial band is so crowded that in many metropolitan areas, the FCC has reallocated frequencies normally used for UHF TV channel 14 for public safety use. The only reason FRS/GMRS exists is because it is limited to very low wattage. The frequencies are in between existing business band frequencies and any more power would disrupt licensed business communications on adjacent channels.
In some places this is against the law. I know where I live you are not allowed to put out your garbage until after 4pm the night before pick-up. Obviously enforcement of this is not consistent. I've seen people randomly get notices on their doors about this, and then there's other neighborhoods where the cans basically sit out all week long instead of being carted back and forth from house to curb.
The reason enforcement is not consistent is they rely on you to narc on your neighbors. Where I used to live, we had an unknown neighbor that would call on just about anything, but a neighbor around the corner would leave a trash can out continuously so nobody could park in front of their house and never get a notice. (For all I know, they were the ones calling on everyone else.)
You bring up some good points. My machine is hardly ever off-line, it reconnects whenever is gets disconnected. Quite often, I keep the same IP for weeks at a time. I have my TTL set to an hour, so caching is less of a problem. I can update my primary DNS as often as I want, and dyndns.org only locks you out if you update with the same IP (they don't want the extra load). All in all, I'm very happy with my setup. My biggest problem is all the e-mail that my system has to bounce because everyone uses bogus addresses at my domain when they fill in forms that require e-mail addresses ;)
--Rich
Running services from a dynamic IP works fine. I have Pacific Bell DSL and I got it just after they stopped doing single static IPs, so I got stuck with a dynamic.
I use qmail for mail and apache with mod_ssl for web service. (Yes, that's really my domain name.) I have several NameVirtualHosts defined for apache (my home page is the same machine), so I have to restart apache whenever I get a new IP. No big deal. I have my domain name pointing to a friends nameserver. The nameserver is updated whenever I get a new IP using Bind 8's dynamic updating features and public key authentication. I havn't had any problems so far.
If you don't have a friend that runs a nameserver, I also have it update my dyndns.org entry and that doesn't seem to have any problems either. All in all, I'm happy with it, and with Bind 8's dynamic updating, having a static IP isn't so crucial any more.
--Rich