OK Demetris, I know JNOS and worked with it in the past. Actually, I have
worked on the code of a system called WNOS, another NOS derivate.
I invented a tunnel to get ip packets through the 'TheNetNode' system
which would only digipeat AX25 frames (called ipcam, IP CAMouflaged).
I think NOS technology, especially the user interface is not something we
can throw 'normal' human beings, and we'd better focus on stuff people are
used to, especially for use under stress situations.
Per,
Yes, I see where you are going... and I completely agree, we had talked
about this before.
I have already bought the book on Postfix (the o'Reilly one), which I have
unfortunately left at home to save weight...
I still have a few concerns. One is the installation of the mail system
(to get an idea, look at http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/), and the
maintenance required. Does this fit in with the idea of a minimalistic ad
hoc network? I agree we can set up a forwarding scheme easily with the use
of standard socket technology. And we are not talking 100 servers but ad hoc
clusters of 2 or 3. Are there tools to automate the generation and
maintenance of accounts?
There is still the question of mail store. In the internet solution we
have only 1 mail store. When you start forwarding stuff, what do you do? You
don't know where a certain client will connect next, and creating a fixed
relationship between client and server limits your flexibility. Maybe this
needs creation of a history map, a trace where the client has connected
during the last weeks, and duplicate (triplicate?) the mail store? Seems
like a waste of resources and bandwidth. The narrow-band philosophy of
pskmail does not support real time (digipeater/router based) direct connects
via hubs. Ideally, users should be able to create a 'local' account
on-the-fly, as we already do in pskmail, which would have to 'wander'
through the network with the client. At the moment this is already done in a
primitive manner via the APRS network (you may have seen APRS messages like
'Gating PA0R').
Maybe the client uses the 'link to server' message to get his mail
forwarded to that particular server. But here again, the servers don't know
what is important, and what not. So they have to forward the whole 'sh..'.
To give you an idea, when I logged into PI4TUE yesterday morning, I was
greeted with "Hi PA0R, you have 96 mails".
Of course all this would only take effect if there is no internet
connection, a path to the internet should have preference.
I was already working on a 'file store' in the internet, I have been
writing a perl module to use a Gmail account as a file store for everybody
(pskmail.files@xxxxxxxxx
). To make sure files are properly backed up regularly :).
The postfix/smtp solution looks like a lot of installation work for the
server 'sysop', and I think the total solution would be an excellent
candidate for pre-configured distribution on a live CD.
It would be nice if we had a team figuring all this out...
73,
Rein EA/PA0R/P
