And the next guy on the list will have just as convincing a reason as to why you can't, and will cite some reference that nobody will check out and take it as gospel. I wonder why nobody wants to volunteer for anything anymore? Probably because we're such an effective bunch at communicating with each other. Just shoot me now. From: PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces@hamwan.org] On Behalf Of KL7WM@aol.com Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 10:53 PM To: psdr@hamwan.org Subject: Re: [HamWAN PSDR] Holy smokes, we have Internet address space! I don't understand why you don't get it. It is LEGAL TO ORDER PIZZA ON HAM RADIO unless you own or work for the pizza business. PERIOD. If you are a pizza delivery driver you can't use amateur radio to get direction to a customer. We have swap net on amateur radio. We talk about money on the air. This is OK TOO! Daniel Stevens, KL7WM In a message dated 2/20/2013 11:38:40 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, cory@nq1e.hm writes: It appears that we're getting our layers mixed up. Phone patches to the pizza place are legitimate because the patching system itself is run by a licensed control operator. In this case, the RF link is layer 1 and the phone call is at least layer 3. The rules are for governing who gets to use layer 1 and for what purpose. It would be totally inappropriate for a pizza place to get a radio and camp on a frequency for the purpose of accepting orders. However, contacting another ham and asking them to order a pizza for you on their phone (or giving you an auto patch to do it yourself) is appropriate because the RF portion is still ham-to-ham, even if the message being relayed is not. The same goes for "broadcasting". Your transmission must be intended for one or more hams, even if the message must be relayed by them to reach its final destination. If you knew the general public all had scanners tuned to a ham frequency, it would not be appropriate to create your own radio show meant for them. Regarding AAA, I think we were also thinking about different layers. Securing the configuration of a network device and providing "security" for a network service (think SSL/TLS) is quite a bit different. I was referring to the latter. Using IPSec(AH) is a very good idea. I have high hopes that this will all work out. It sounds like so much fun, I can't contain myself! ;) -Cory On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 9:55 PM, Bart Kus <me@bartk.us> wrote: First of all, +1, Informative. On 2/20/2013 11:22 AM, Cory (NQ1E) wrote: It's not just optimization. We have serious restrictions on what type of content can be moved over our RF links. Everyone who runs a device that transmits is responsible for its operation. Luckily there is precedent here since each node can be considered the same as a "digital packet repeater" in historical context. In those cases, the repeater operator is not held liable for illegal content relayed through them as long as they take "reasonable measures" to limit it and when discovered, stop it. While it's not preferable to get into the distributed firewall business, it may be necessary if this network carries traffic to or from the internet. If we had another "reasonable" way to make sure only licensed hams were able to originate content on the network, firewalls likely wouldn't be needed. I think of the case of an audio repeater phone patch. A ham can call someone via hammy spectrum, but the return voice traffic may not belong to a ham. This has been allowed in the past as fair use. Now if we tweak the scenario and say the phone call is originally inbound from the repeater to the ham by a non-ham, but consists of content which the ham (in control of hanging up) considers appropriate as per the hammy rules of airwave content, should the conversation be allowed to continue? :) My read on this is yes. 99% of the airtime will be the bidirectional content of the conversation, just as it is in the outbound case. As long as this content is in compliance with ham law, it ought not matter who sent the original ring. The next step in this line of thinking is to translate the concepts of the analog telephone call to that of opening a digital inbound TCP session to a ham server. It's up to the ham who is hosting the server to ensure that the content of such conversations complies with ham rules. Hang up (TCP RST) the session if the content goes outside the law. The role of HamWAN is simply to facilitate the exchange of signals, and we're not held responsible (as per voice repeater rules) should hams decide to break the rules of content. There is of course that little lingering issue of the initial unsolicited ring in the analog world, or TCP SYN in the digital world making its way onto hammy spectrum. I like to think HamWAN could even set some useful precedent here, by delivering worthy use-cases, and perhaps cause an eventual tweak to the official rules to allow for short control messages ("I would like to talk") to be sent over hammy spectrum by non-hammies. Another way of thinking about this inbound ring from non-hams is that while the actual ring is received by ham equipment (repeater / digital microwave router) on a non-hammy medium (telco / ISP network), the hammy RF spectrum transmission from the repeater or digital microwave router is not a signal relay, but rather a whole new communication, initiated by a ham-licensed station (the repeater and its owner) to inform the target ham of the presence of an inbound message on the non-hammy medium, and is therefore ham2ham traffic after all! We can do these legal mental gymnastics for a long time, but the bottom line is unless someone actually complains and the FCC decides to care, we should just go on and operate instead of shying away in fear. If the practices are eventually ruled as illegal, we can cease such operations easily by applying new firewall rules. I hope it does not come to that as it would greatly stall the progress of digital ham radio. In a somewhat related issue, there is also precedent for hams using encrypted WiFi links with part 97 rules. Supposedly, it's only acceptable to encrypt when the purpose is not to hide the content of your message. This means that it's okay to run encryption as long you publish the decryption keys so that they could be found by the public (negating the point of using encryption in most cases). Agreed, and I know of people who do this with P25 gear. But I don't see any useful cases in which HamWAN could make use of encryption while publishing the keys. The frequencies that we're allowed to use as licensed radio amateurs belong to the public and we're allowed to use them for the purposes of experimentation and communication with other amateurs. In order to assure the fair use of such a valuable resource, we have to follow strict rules that prevent commercial interests from taking over. That's why we're not allowed to conduct business on the air or communicate with the general public (broadcast). That's also why it's important that anything transmitted is not intentionally obfuscated from anyone else's ability to view it. I see the definition of broadcast <http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=ad552c047464dd8e611924492c5 b41c6&rgn=div5&view=text&node=47:5.0.1.1.6&idno=47#47:5.0.1.1.6.1.157.2> you cite there, and boy is that a weird one. I'd counter this with my phone patch example, and cite the ARRL guidance <http://www.arrl.org/phone-patch-guidelines> on the matter, which allow communication with non-amateur third parties (is that the same as "general public"?). In fact, the ARRL guidance counters what has been said about commercial communications in a previous thread: Calls to place an order for a commercial product may be made such as the proverbial call to the pizza restaurant to order food, but not calls to one's office to receive or to leave business messages since communications on behalf of ones employer are not permitted. The ARRL guidance on reverse autopatch (inbound TCP) actually runs counter to my views on the subject. In part, it states: Incoming calls to an autopatch must be answered and screened off the air by the control operator to ensure rule compliance. If an incoming call automatically causes the repeater to transmit, even if it's just a signal tone or notification message, then it is possible for an unlicensed person to initiate a transmission without the control operator's knowledge or approval, which is not permitted. This to me sounds like we absolutely need a ham-controlled edge firewall mechanism to "screen the calls off the air" as per the individual hams' specifications. One thing is for sure: we're in brand new territory. We need to tread with the utmost character so we set a good example for others who follow us. As a long-time computer engineer with a strong emphasis on security, the idea of having such an open network is very scary to me. However, it's also why I'm excited about the challenge. When most people think about security, they only think about secrecy (hiding your messages). However, security also includes authentication (making sure messages really come from the intended sender) and integrity (has this message been altered in transit). With those two aspects and a lot of help from public key cryptography, my hope is to contribute to making a network that is both open *and* secure. I've already made some strides in this area for other ham-related projects of mine, and now I'm hoping to translate that to the needs of the overall network. This is exactly right. Well, almost. :) Cisco's thinking gets it right when they refer to AAA: Authentication, Authorization and Accounting. For anyone unfamiliar with what these concepts mean exactly, can refer to this page <http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_2/security/configuration/guide/scfaa a.html#wp1000889> . Also Wikipedia has a page on AAA <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_protocol> . The additional point you make about Integrity may not necessarily fall under the "Authentication" concept, since that deals more with actors in a network rather than the non-molestation of their messages, but can be served nicely by an implementation of IPSec in AH mode <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipsec#Authentication_Header> . Tons of work here for sure, after the lower layers of the network (RF) are up and running. --Bart On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 12:16 AM, Bart Kus <me@bartk.us> wrote: It's just a little more efficient to stop unwanted traffic early, before it takes up a bunch of airtime. Just an optimization, which may not be worth the complexity right up front. Your suggestion works too. --Bart On 2/19/2013 8:46 PM, Benjamin Krueger wrote: Just saw this, "just needs to push an ACL update". Why can't we just route all traffic and let the client nodes run their own firewalls? We *really* don't want to be in the distributed firewall business. :) On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 4:04 PM, Bart Kus <me@bartk.us> wrote: Global reachability is not in conflict with autonomy. Achieving both simultaneously just requires careful design of HamWAN network services. If the HamWAN internet feed drops off, the routing, DNS and other services need to continue working. The first word in ASN is Autonomous after all. :) I consider NAT and Proxies as old crusty hacks from the age of ISPs giving out just 1 IP/customer. It's time to put these ideas to rest. IPv6 will do this on the commercial internet in the coming years, and AMPRnet will allow us to do it immediately here. For the cases where communication is to be restricted due to user preference, we can push filtering rules to firewalls at the edges of the network, and at the HamWAN <-> user site interface. In short, firewalls: yes, nat+gateways: no. If a user wants to make a service running on one of his servers public, he just needs to push an ACL update to HamWAN and it'll be opened up. No need to re-IP, update DNS, change NICs, whatever else. And most importantly, it makes everyone equal. Your subnet allocation has the same powers as mine. There is no special ground to fight over, such as space on a public subnet, or access to some officially sanctioned gateway servers that are allowed to do special things. If you want though, you can of course live in the world of private IPs and NAT. Just configure your LAN router that way. Complete freedom of configuration. This is the way the internet should have evolved for geeks! --Bart On 2/13/2013 8:30 AM, Cory (NQ1E) wrote: Unless I've misunderstood the point of this network all together, there shouldn't be a case where we want the entire network address space to be reachable from the global internet. It's much more likely that the network will remain as autonomous as possible and any connections to the internet will be for connecting specific services through a gateway of some sort. A subnet of at least /23 (typical minimum for global BGP announcements) should be reserved for the purpose of being globally routable in the future, if/when HamWAN decides to peer with one or more ISPs. An address in the /23 can be given to each service gateway for connecting to the internet. The rest of the 44-net allocation can be treated as private address space, except that it's essentially guaranteed not to cause conflicts with the user-level networks since it's still globally unique. On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 2:28 AM, Bart Kus <me@bartk.us> wrote: Clever ;) What if HamWAN switches ISPs? All that IPv6 space would need to be given up. It can't follow you AFAIK. Or the ISP may charge whatever they feel like to let you take it with you. Also bad. The fees for IPv6 are not as low as I had hoped, but not as high as you think either! There's a 25% discount in effect for "extra-small" allocations (which are still larger than the entire IPv4 internet). The cost looks to be $937.50/yr. Not sure it's worth the cost, given the IPv4 AMPRnet situation. We can very likely just expand our AMPRnet allocation if we out-grow the /20. --Bart On 2/13/2013 1:10 AM, Cory (NQ1E) wrote: Here's an IPv6 allocation for you ;) ::ffff:44.24.240.0/116 With the obvious exception of AMPRNet addresses for amateur radio use, IP allocations should come from an ISP. Obtaining a direct allocation from ARIN would cost around a couple grand per year. On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 12:46 AM, Bart Kus <me@bartk.us> wrote: Result: APPROVED Your allocated subnet is: 44.24.240.0 / 20 <tel:44.24.240.0%20%2F%2020> https://portal.ampr.org/networks.php?a=region <https://portal.ampr.org/networks.php?a=region&id=191> &id=191 HamWAN now has 4096 real Internet IPs to play with. Next up: we gotta crack the mystery of getting IPv6 net space. Any volunteers? :) What an incredibly productive day, --Bart _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org -- Benjamin _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.org/mailman/listinfo/psdr_hamwan.org