Re:And the point is? (Score 1)

What's the point of IRLP? Well one thing is for certain, the amateur with the 12 ounce hand held, self-contained, transceiver has a big mobility advantage over any computer capable of VOIP. Portability and service work go hand in hand; there's also a big community internationally and voice discussion has, thankfully, its place even in this world of weblogs, email, and instant messaging. What's the point of ham radio, period, many will ask. Thankfully there's plenty of history to lean on when answering that question. Experimentation and love of technology were driving factors behind many 'amateurs' who also happened to have full time jobs in engineering, since and technology, building real world solutions. There are a number of 'firsts' that the amateur community have contributed, and far more work has been done in the area of making seemingly complex technologies broadly available, thanks to low budget experimentation. Here's a good overall history of amateur radio: http://www.ac6v.com/history.htm Closer to home for the dot.com / telco generation that we live in now, a couple of quick examples pop into my mind: Phil Karn KA9Q, a early proponent of IP based networking software technology over air interfaces, works for Qualcomm. His KA9Q TCP/IP 'Network Operating System' and clones of it were in wide distribution in the amateur community long before Ebay was a glimmer in someone's eye, and long before PCS was a reality. Packet radio communications became more common in the 70's when the Vancouver based amateur group VADCG came out with a first prototype of an inexpensive computer-radio interface dubbed the Terminal Node Controller. Big networks were built on the air using these basic technologies, back in the days when 1200b or 9600b air transmission was still considered pretty fast since POTS service on wires couldn't deliver much more then. To sum it up, IRLP is just one facet of amateur radio service -- it, portability, wide array of frequencies (from extremely low frequencies to HF microwave and beyond), many permissible modes of transmission, freedom of experimentation, and a large international community of users and contributors are what make the amateur service unique and interesting. Mike VE7WV