Why am I so interested in HSMM-MESH?
I see incredible opportunity for hams here. As a career I.T. guy with decades of TCP/IP and data center work, I have long had the belief the amateur service has such untapped potential. 15 years ago I wrote a very high ranking league official on my idea, with illustrations and detail - he didn't bother to respond. I realize now the league was far more than him and I should have tried another route. Anyway like it or not, it's now come because "it had to come". The only question now is how to make this eventuality a grand slam.
Here's my thought -
What can the amateur service do to truly, truly, truly make a big difference in America? True disaster preparedness - for the worst case. Last winter my area in Dallas experienced 3 days of power outage. Now, while Northerners may think that's no big deal it was a wake up call to me. Simple ice did it - and it was more of the extensive nature and we simply had to wait our turn. So I began to really think hard about a nuclear attack (sorry, it's unpleasant but needs to be said), be it terrorist or from a rogue nation. If the attack caused widespread power outages and human toll then our infrastructure in DFW would crumble (based on the winter's experience). Also, a big concern is the financial debit system. Loss of the telco (SS7) signaling system would shut that down and since voice over IP has long ago exposed the network to terrorism this is a real and present danger. Why does that matter? Because people aren't carrying cash anymore, at least not enough - and with no debit system there will be a run on the grocery stores, just as a start. I guess what I'm saying is, it seems that disaster in a big way seems more likely than ever, unfortunately. How can amateurs be ready to provide REAL help?
First - The National Traffic System is really fledgling along. I love the whole idea of getting back on CW with the various cycles - it's been a few years - but unfortunately it lacks robust capability. I'm very grateful the participants in the NTS cycles are doing what they're doing - they're devoted, they're driven and they are highly skilled at what they do. Having said that, if the worst of the worst disasters hit us, the current NTS system would simply provide a very (very) limited value to disaster recovery. There would be plenty of messages traversing, but incredibly minuscule as it relates to the percentage of demand. So... how can we get the following goals accomplished?
How can the NTS carry the following:
1 - First Responder traffic
2 - Hospital reports / status updates on all patients
3 - Status of township infrastructure with repair expectation reports
4 - Public information during emergency status (Food, shelter, security, medical)
5 - Assist in recovery of "normal" infrastructure (maybe this is #1)
Does this sound totally unrealistic? Come on, really? Not to me! With technology it's truly achievable.
In a nutshell - "MESH" can certainly handle an incredible amount of traffic - we need the apps however to deal with the traffic and keep the traffic repetition down. As an example - totally off the cuff. Let's say 100% of all commercial power is down - Baylor hospital is running on their generators and has a long list of status message updates. Their list is updated to a volunteer who is updating on a simple mySQL db application and that is available on a query basis.
Now you say "so what, how can we get the info out, how is it useful?". Think out of the box! What if the public were aware that there were certain specific instructions for people to check on a precinct by precinct basis? Heck, they vote that way now - I suppose one solution would be to state "for accurate and most available information on (you name it), check in with your local voting precinct location." That location could have ALL of the information from the five categories mentioned above. Furthermore, in a disaster, the Red Cross and other agencies could partner with us to publish the information in many local places within walking distance.
So, that covers nearly 90% of the immediate LOCAL need correct? After all, when it comes to the big disasters, it's all about local services. Beyond that we need to be sure to establish a very solid gateway service. The gateways would be used to deliver summary information and report it on a nationwide scale. With a little work there's no reason why the health and welfare database could not be made available on an inquiry basis... - powerful!
Now I want to mention something dear to my heart - the current NTS. Believe it or not I think the current NTS has an incredible opportunity to be integral to this process. While I've laid out roses and perfume as far as the possible success, the reality is there still will be plenty of chaos, am I correct? That's where the NTS comes in. Imagine that with all our good efforts to pre-define how things will run, we absolutely have to have the NTS running in the background with traffic designed to fix and coordinate the infrastructure just described. Further, the NTS will need to take the role to keep the MESH operators coordinated! That means that the CW cycles would need to practice carrying traffic that would coordinate that very activity. Without that command and control running the system would have no way to recover. The NTS would serve to "reconnect" the system. Re-connections would not only be the overall policies based on the emergency, but on-going "Fix it" coordination for the network.
What an opportunity for the amateur service to be an awesome public service. I love HSMM-MESH because of the potential to be integral to this idea. I think that obviously on a local basis it would be very limited without gateway capability. We should absolutely not gateway to the public internet, and not for any other reason than to ensure we have absolutely zero reliance on it, even accidentally.
I'll skip the local MESH discussion per-se, obviously we need critical mass in towns and cities. For back-haul though it takes transport and application intelligence. We need a router to recognize the traffic port and route it to the proper gateway. But the gateway needs to route it to amateur SaaS (Cloud) applications. Apps that are sharing databases in synchronous ways in case somebody goes down.
I get excited when I think of what we could do if we really put our minds to it. Imagine that to be a certified "Class XYZ" ARES amateur that someone has certified your infrastructure according to the following capabilities:
1 - Battery backup (60 minutes)
2 - Small generator, enough to power your gear for two weeks on 10 gallons of fuel
3 - 10 gallons of fuel and a log that shows you cycle the fuel to your car every X weeks
4 - Some type of n+1 component redundancy
5 - Certified link to another peer or back-haul location
6 - Logs proving you carried type X, Y and Z messages
That's about it, wow, can you imagine the capacity of what we could do? It would be amazing. The project would be fun and build our expertise greatly.
What are your thoughts and other ideas?
Patrick KM5L
Dallas, Texas
