Hi All, I had this information sent to me on the W6GO PacketCluster Disk for February 1992. There is some useful info which might be of interest to others considering 9600 baud packet links. There are eight parts in all. 73 de Steve G3VMW @ GB7LDS ************************* 9600 BAUD PACKET HANDBOOK ************************* by Mike Curtis, WD6EHR A handbook of helpful information for those wanting to implement K9NG/G3RUH format packet 1 9600 BAUD PACKET - WHY? An often heard quote on packet: "My TNC works fine at 1200 baud. Why bother with 9600? I can only type with 2 fingers." This is true, but only if we assume the following: 1. you're the only one typing with 2 fingers on "your" channel; 2. typing with 2 fingers is the ultimate goal of packet; 3. what we're presently doing is all we ever want to do, and; 4. packet in fact _is_ working perfectly. However, this is far from the case. The present packet system is in desperate need of improvement. Packet is capable of far more than what we see it doing today. 1.1 DEFINING PACKET RADIO'S SHORTCOMINGS First, let's analyze the situation: 1. Short hop simplex works well, but only if the hop is a clean, line of sight path and the channel is not very busy. If you live in L.A., you're already rolling on the floor with hysterical laughter. 2. NETROM/TheNET/ROSE, and other networking protocols work poorly with multi-hop 1200 baud trunking. 3. Mail requires days/weeks to reach its destination, IF it ever gets there! 4. Ruling out HF packet (which isn't such a bad idea anyway :-), we're limited to NETROM over radio paths of a few hundred miles or so. 5. Other areas, like Europe, have far more sophisticated and efficient packet trunking systems and user access channels that work. (This is news to me!) 6. Urban packet channels are overcrowded to the extent that many have thrown in the towel. 1.2 THE CURE Now let's dream a bit: NEWS FLASH! WD6EHR's fairy godmother grants Mike several wishes. After the obvious wishes have been carried out, a slip of the tongue grants us a super-duper packet system. (HEY!! I wanted a new pair of socks instead! My old ones are gettin' kinda gamey!!) When I wake up in the afternoon, I work FR0CK in France, TR0PIC in Gabon, L0RRY (Moe) and CU2LY (Joe) (and SH3MP breaks into our roundtable, too), doing all of this via our high-speed packet multi-megabit world-wide trunking system. I receive packet mail at my station within seconds of its being posted. We have conferences with 50 to 100 packeteers on a single 2 meter frequency. Wow, are my eyes buggin' out! A lot of us are involuntarily learning to speed read! Todays TIMES headline: EVELYN WOOD DECLARES BANKRUPTCY! Large files are being transferred between local stations, and are coming in via the high speed trunk. I decide to get a copy of the newest PD version of "Super Italian Brothers", which was just finished 30 minutes ago in Japan, so I connect to our _L_O_C_A_L_ fileserver (he got it automagically off the master trunk) and download a copy of this 400K file. This takes me all of 10 minutes on our 9600 baud end user channel, while I chat with a few of the locals (W1MPY in Baastin, Mass; and K0OKY in Dayton, OH) on the conference bridge. While in QSO, I open another session and look up these guys in the central nameserver data base, and find that W1MPY used to be a shipmate of Popeye Doyle, went to school with Dan Quayle, and was originally licensed in the '60's as H1PPY. I want to use my little T-1000 laptop XT to do some super-autoCAD (which requires a full blown 486), so I remote execute on another machine via high speed packet, and receive the results on my printer. -=- Packet has capabilities far beyond simple text applications, such as file transfer, remote execution (allowing you to use my computer to run software, and then send the results back to yours), nameservers (callbook on a CD is an example of this), remote printing, and even linking several smaller computers to undertake a much larger task than any of these would be capable of alone. -=- What would make all of this possible? Higher speed packet. A 10 megabit world-wide trunking system would tie all the metropolitan areas together, and these would be served by metropolitan area networks, with efficient 2 meter 9600 baud local access channels. (and higher speed, i.e. 56 kB, on higher frequencies.) Am I dreaming? Too many brewski's? Not at all - this is all done using EXISTING, INEXPENSIVE technology! We don't need any magic - just a small fire under certain easy chairs - YOURS! And do you know who I'm talking about? All of you who think I'm talking about someone else! Yes - with POPULAR support, this isn't just possible - it's easily accomplished!