Fwd: [Mep-dev] MEP as an IP Network

[Paul Williamson]

I neglected to CC the list when sending this.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Williamson <paul@mustbeart.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 12:13 PM
Subject: Re: [Mep-dev] MEP as an IP Network
To: "Timothy J. Salo" <salo@saloits.com>


On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 10:53 AM, Timothy J. Salo <salo@saloits.com> wrote:
> I don't know what "searching, rooms, filters, friends lists"
> are, but they all sound like applications that might use the MEP,
> rather than functionality that should be provided by the MEP
> (which, I claim, ought to be an IP network).

I think IP is probably the right implementation, but I don't think
it's a good strategy to disregard the user applications entirely and
concentrate exclusively on building yet another way to hook up IP. It
might be the right technical solution, but it won't capture the
imagination of the ham radio community. We need to offer at least one
"hook", something really cool that MEP enables that wasn't really
available before.

For ACP, this was (in my imagination anyway) going to be a new flavor
of multiuser voice chat that combined the best features of the local
FM repeater with the wide coverage of a high orbit satellite, with
plenty of support for the multiple conversations and findability you'd
need to make it scalable enough for such a large footprint. To get
this to work right, we would probably need to break some protocol
layering assumptions and re-invent a few wheels. Or maybe not. Anyway,
we're not working on that here.

For MEP, on the other hand, we don't have the large footprint.
Instead, we can have high bit rates. So what does that enable us to do
that's cool? If the best we can do is provide a modestly fat pipe for
IP, that's worthwhile and needed, but not very exciting. What can we
do that's actually more interesting than 802.11 with a power amp?