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Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

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Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#81
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s frustrating that they paint the unused space as evidence of of abandonment, but the reality is that it’s been impossible to use any of this address space!

I didn't even know about it until yesterday! It's kept quiet and secret I guess. As a ham for 10 years now, I totally would've used this for projects if I could've got allocated space. I believe http://hamwan.org/ is on 44.0.0.0.

I didn't ham radio (beyond building a regenerative receptor), but my father was very active on 80's. Him and a few others, build a computer network using ham transceptors and something called "digipiper". I remember saying that had a small BBS on it, running on a 286.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hate to be a downer, but nobody even knew about this space until it was mentioned here. Speak for yourself. :) >The rules of the modern Internet are "encrypt everything and trust nothing." The laws of ham radio are literally "you must not encrypt anything". It wasn't meant to be, unless you want to change the laws in every ITU member state. More to the point, the regulations around third-party communications [0] m…

> They refuse to acknowledge that they are selling off what is essentially a public resource. I think I'm OK with this. Someone decided to ask for a ton of free IP addresses when the Internet was a crazy thing nobody cared about. That person appointed a board of directors to manage the resource. The appointed board then decided "let's turn that valuable resource into money." That's just capitalism. Is it fair that so…

I agree. If the ham community has internal disagreements about the sale or the use of the money, they should talk to one another in a courthouse. Meanwhile, let the rest of the world make better use of those millions of IP addresses! It's not like Amazon is going to squat on their new /10. We all know they will soon be available for anyone to use on AWS.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#83
post #62

I hate to be a downer, but nobody even knew about this space until it was mentioned here. I've been a ham for almost 10 years and this is the first I've heard of it. The Internet and ham radio don't mix. The rules of the modern Internet are "encrypt everything and trust nothing." The laws of ham radio are literally "you must not encrypt anything". It wasn't meant to be, unless you want to change the laws in every ITU…

> The laws of ham radio are literally "you must not encrypt anything" Wait, really? Why is this the case?

The FCC, which has explicit purview over how radio frequencies are used, details the rules for amateur radio in part 97. In particular, "Amateur" is explicitly defined there to not allow commercial interests to use those radio waves. The US government allocated portions of the radio spectrum for use by (licensed) amateurs, kind of like the national parks. I'm not allowed to cut down trees in Yosemite and run my own private road so I can make a shortcut and drive right up to Half Dome. The prohibition against encryption comes from a similar place. If you're looking for privacy, ham radio is not the medium to use.

FCC part 97 covers amateur operation (in the US), and the relevant part is §97.309 (4)(b), which states "data emissions using unspecified digital codes must not be transmitted for the purpose of obscuring the meaning of any communication."

The intent of the "unspecified digital code" matters. My reading of this is that unspecified codes for authentication are allowed. I've always wanted to build telnet with authentication - if interested, others could to watch what I'm doing, but not be able to impersonate me.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#84
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no incentive for migrating to ipv6 for corporations. I have said this previously NAT breaks the Internet [0]. Without setting an expiration date for ipv4 NAT is going to get dragged to 2050. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20253427

Maybe NAT breaks the Internet of twenty years ago. But we've already worked around it. I'm using a computer which is behind a NAT which is behind a CG-NAT and everything works fine. Sure, people can't connect to me directly, but why would I want that to happen? If anything, that makes my computer more secure. I know this sounds like trolling, but let's be pragmatic.

Some users do want people to be able to connect to them directly though, hence Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), which can open ports on your router. You may disagree with the wisdom of automating the port forwarding process for people who don't understand networking concepts but there are people that do want other people to be able to connect to them directly, even if you don't.

Generalizing that one use case will suits everybody, fits about as well as one-size-fits-all clothing. Which never fits right.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#85
post #40

Interesting to look at the usage of the block in the context of the entire IPv4 space (2018): https://benjojo.co.uk/internet-2018.png

XKCD's rendition: https://xkcd.com/195/

I feel it's slightly more readable, if out of date.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#86

I hate to be a downer, but nobody even knew about this space until it was mentioned here. I've been a ham for almost 10 years and this is the first I've heard of it. The Internet and ham radio don't mix. The rules of the modern Internet are "encrypt everything and trust nothing." The laws of ham radio are literally "you must not encrypt anything". It wasn't meant to be, unless you want to change the laws in every ITU…

> "There is an antique router configuration out there that creates a peering arrangement between the University of California and Amazon that's not authorized!" Guess what guys, they'll probably shut down the arrangement.

The 44/8 route would never get used for Amazon traffic in any case given that Amazon's BGP advertisments for 44.192.0.0/10 would be more specific than 44.0.0.0/8. In the worst case, the University of California would get inadvertently DDoSed if Amazon suffer routing issues and then retract the /8 route in favour of advertising the remaining 3 /10s they care about.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#87
post #68

We were supposed to run out of space in the 90s, but NAT was a temporary bandaid that turned into the status quo. Not the original intent, and it’s used as a de facto firewall with really mixed results. I say, exhaust it and force people into IPv6 like we should all be on.

There's no incentive for migrating to ipv6 for corporations. I have said this previously NAT breaks the Internet [0]. Without setting an expiration date for ipv4 NAT is going to get dragged to 2050. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20253427

There are incentives. Smaller for US and European corporations, higher for Indian ones.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#88
post #66
post #40

Interesting to look at the usage of the block in the context of the entire IPv4 space (2018): https://benjojo.co.uk/internet-2018.png

What are Ford and Prudential doing with their allocation? It seems unnecessary for them to have so much space.

I guess that at some point Ford though they could have an IP for each car? Out of curiosity I looked at the headers of an email I got from them and sure enough it came from an IP in their allocation! However, the same was not true for emails from Daimler...

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#89
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe NAT breaks the Internet of twenty years ago. But we've already worked around it. I'm using a computer which is behind a NAT which is behind a CG-NAT and everything works fine. Sure, people can't connect to me directly, but why would I want that to happen? If anything, that makes my computer more secure. I know this sounds like trolling, but let's be pragmatic.

Some users do want people to be able to connect to them directly though, hence Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), which can open ports on your router. You may disagree with the wisdom of automating the port forwarding process for people who don't understand networking concepts but there are people that do want other people to be able to connect to them directly, even if you don't. Generalizing that one use case will sui…

Those that want or need a public IP can pay for it. I do. As you say, there is no one-size-fits-all.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not usually a “let the market decide” person, but ARIN has only made this problem worse with their idealism over reality policies. Their response has continued to be “time to switch to ipv6” which grossly oversimplifies the reality of the issue. Oddly enough, the Europeans, through RIPE are doing it right by allowing a market system so that unused but assigned net blocks can be sold to people that actually have a…

I believe the op is not talking about a denial by ARIN. The 44 space is administered by a series of volunteers that I believe is distributed worldwide. Some people in the amateur radio community like to create little fiefdoms and the distribution of subnets in 44 is not immune to this type of gate keeping.

Ah whoops, sorry about that. Thought they were referencing the larger IP space issue. My point still stands, ARIN is terrible :)
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