Category Archives: IPv6

Amateur Radio, AX25, IPv6, Technology, Work

World IPv6 Day

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In “Celebration” of World IPv6 Day, David suggested that we try a “Crazy Ping”, showing how easy it is to get IPv6 running, even on the most oddball networks.  For the heck of it, I configured up this evening the following

A Netbook with an Icom ID-1 D-Star radio plugged into its ethernet port.

A Laptop with both an Icom ID-1 D-Star radio plugged into its ethernet port, and a Kenwood TH-D72 configured in Kiss Mode (9600baud AX.25) plugged into a USB port. The laptop was then configured with an IPv6 over IPv4 tunnel to…

A Desktop, with a Kenwood TM-D710 configured in Kiss mode plugged into an RS-232 port.  The desktop also is my sixxs tunnel endpoint.

It isn’t often that you can ‘hear’ someone connect to your computer, but with every packet, the squelch on the TH-D72 opened. So I could hear every packet going to the notebook.

The “Testbed”:

The result:


j0n@scott:~$ ping6 -c 1 2001:770:132:deaf::2
PING 2001:770:132:deaf::2(2001:770:132:deaf::2) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2001:770:132:deaf::2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=3073 ms

--- 2001:770:132:deaf::2 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 3073.686/3073.686/3073.686/0.000 ms

Now why would anyone want to run IPv6 over IPv4 over AX.25? well that is a different question altogether, all I can say is that it works, but not very efficiently.

Amateur Radio, Computing, DIY, Green, IPv6, Technology, Work

“Gorilla” Update

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I’ve not been in the shack all that much recently (being part of the organising team the the Irish IPv6 Summit kept me busy) so I have not been doing much checking up on the PV installation and how it is working.  Today, after assisting the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group set up a station for the EI2GEO special event station, I got to sit down and do some investigations. I have a second 60 Watt solar panel that I mentioned before. We hooked it into the battery system on Jim, EI8IG’s camper van to keep the battery topped up via solar power, and ran the radio from the same battery bank.  This evening I dropped out my little 850 watt generator to keep the battery topped up overnight (and to give it a good run).

Today over a 12 hour period between approximately 08:00-20:00, my rrdtool graph says the system produced an average of 148 watts. 148 x 12 gives 1776kw, or approximately 28.5 cents of electricty (including vat). If we have about 7000 more days of sunshine like today  (unlikely) then the system will have “paid for itself”.  While it doesn’t seem like a whole lot, it is currently averaging about 1/6 of the ESB bill (over 30 days).

That is the first part done. Next I intend to replace my power hungry dell dimension desktop (approx. 125 watts, 24/7 or approx. 48 cents per day ) with a more efficient machine (approx 20 watts or approx. 8 cents per day). To do this I have purchased an Intel Pine Trail base D510MO a 40GB SSD drive, 4GB of ram and a DC powered case (I already have a DC supply in the shack, plus I can experiment with it in the car as well).

Thus far the machine seems to be able to do most of the tasks I need it to do, time will tell though as I need to get 6 RS-232 ports operational on it to control all the items I have running.

As an aside, we recently replaced the old washing machine (at least 10 years) with a super duper A rated new one.  Initial testing seems to suggest that it is no more efficient than the old one. My suspicion is that I tested the old one (which I no longer have) in late Autumn, where it would have the benefit of taking hot water from the cylinder (Central Heating). The new one doesn’t have a Hot water input, so has to heat the water itself.

Computing, IPv6, Technology, Work

Irish IPv6 Summit

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Its taking up quite a bit of my time at the moment, and rapidly approaching (19th May).  Registration opened today (finally!), and the (draft) agenda is:

08:30 Registration and Coffee/Tea
09:00 Ministerial Launch

  • Minister of State, Science Technology and Innovation, Conor Lenihan

09:30 Welcome Address

  • Mícheál Ó Foghlú , (Chair, Irish IPv6 TF)

NATIONAL CONTEXTS

10:00 KEYNOTE New Zealand and Ireland: IPv6 Deployment Challenges for Islands

  • Brian Carpenter, Professor (University of Auckland)

10:30 Irish IPv6 Policy

  • Roger O’Connor , Director of Business & Technology (DCENR)

11:00 Coffee/Tea Break and Networking

MOBILE WIRELESS AND FIXED BROADBAND

11:30 Dutch Experience with Fixed IPv6 Broadband

  • Marco Hogewoning (XS4ALL)

12:00 Campus Deployment of IPv6

  • Tim Chown (University of Southampton)

12:30 Irish Experience of Wireless IPv6 Broadband

  • Martin List-Petersen CTO (AirWire)

13:00 LUNCH and Networking

DEPLOYMENT AND POLICY ISSUES
14:00 KEYNOTE: RIPE NCC and IPv6

  • Daniel Karrenberg, Chief Scientist (RIPE- NCC)

14:30 Irish IPv6 Deployment for Hosting Providers

  • Michele Neylon Managing Director (Blacknight Internet Solutions)

15:00 The Story so Far: IPv4 Depletion

  • Geoff Huston Chief Scientist (APNIC) (via Video)

15:20 Coffee/Tea Break and Networking

ENTERPRISE ISSUES AND DISCUSSION
16:00 IPv6 Enterprise Strategy

  • Yanick Pouffary , HP Distinguished Technologist in IPv6

16:30 Panel Session: IPv6 Deployment Challenges

  • Yves Paindaveine (EU Commission)
  • Mat Ford (ISOC)
  • Tim Chown (University of Southampton)
  • Dennis Jennings Board Member (ICANN)
  • Dave Northey (Microsoft)

17.30 Finish

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Computing, IPv6, Work

LinShim6 v0.9 Released

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“I am glad to announce that LinShim6 version 0.9 has been released. The major additions are the followings:

——————
– Support for Keepalive Timeout option
– Faster failure recovery for TCP applications (thanks to RTO reset upon path change)
– Shim6 can now be compiled as a module. The trigger heuristic is defined as a separate module. So that it can be
unloaded or replaced depending on the needs. For example, a server that does not want to initiate a Shim6
negotiation by itself, but only answer to requests, can simply unload the heuristic module.
– Added a console option, that allows dynamic setting of the failure detection timer.
——————

The useful links are the followings :

* LinShim6 main page, where you can download the kernel patch and the daemon : http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/LinShim6
* Updated draft shim6-impl (implementation report) : http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/shim6-implementation-report-linshim6
* Documentation (not yet updated for 0.9, however) : http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/linshim6-implementation-shim6-protocol

regards,

Sébastien.

—
Sébastien Barré
Researcher,
CSE department, UCLouvain, Belgium
http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/sbarre”

We (TSSG) have been working with Sébastien, for quite a while, debugging the implementation, and adding features to it. Specifically in the EFIPSANS project, we are looking at SHIM6’s failure recovery capabilities in the event of one network interfacing (or, indeed one upstream provider) loosing connectivity. We have been sidetracked for a while with lots of project documentation to be delivered to the EU, hopefully we can get a linux iso prepared once again to allow others to experiment.

Computing, IPv6, Work

Irish IPv6 Summit.

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Through where I work, I’ve been using/breaking/experimenting with difference facets of IPv6 for several years. Part of what TSSG has been doing is attempting to raise awareness about IPv6 whenever the opportunity arises.  As part of the Irish IPv6 task force, TSSG is helping to organise an IPv6 Summit, which is expressly for the purpose of raising awareness in the public and private sectors. Even if you have only a passing interest, do come along (and ask difficult questions!).

Amateur Radio, General, Green, IPv6

Guilt free Radio!

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Eamonn seems to be enjoying his holidays. With R$15 all-you-can-eat dinners and R$1 for a beer, I’m not surprised. I, on the other hand have been so busy recently it just was not funny.

AREN has been soaking up my spare (ha!) time, with meetings, documentation, and other stuff that comes with trying to organise volunteers. AREN was also involved in recent exercises with other Voluntary Emergency Services in South Tipp,

imgp0844.jpg

and last weekend AREN members aided the Glen of Aherlow Fáilte Society with communications for the Glen of Aherlow Walking Festival, as the weather was forecast to be good, numbers were quite high. Communications from both sides of the mountain were provided and everything seemed to go without a hitch (other than the torrential shower just before walkers got to the buses on Saturday afternoon). Bernard, EI8FDB, has a few pics up on flickr taken during the event. Finally though, things are slowly getting under control (even on the DIY Front!) AND we found that shim6 bug I was talking about, so I can make some headway in work.

Now, as to the title of the post (Thanks Seamus!). I’ve been collecting bits and pieces for a while (2 years or so), batteries, solar panels, charge controllers etc. I finally got the panels installed, (sub optimally unfortunately, but wife friendly) two weeks ago. I let the batteries charge up fully, then I switched off my 13.8Volt PSU, and switched on the (slightly adjusted) 24v-12V DC DC converter. That was the 27th of May. Since then I’ve had my radio gear running from it just the battery bank and the panels (some of it 24×7). At this moment in time (approx 11 days later), the panels have put 204Ah into the battery bank, the DC-DC converter has consumed 350Ah.

Miguel was asking me to work this out during the week, so here goes (its late, and I’m tired so I could easily be way off here)

554 * 24 (volts) = 13.296 (KWh)

13.296.5 /11 * 365 = 441.18kWh for the year.

My last bill says a unit costs 15.02 cent (incl vat), so I should ‘save’ about €66.26 on the ESB Bill over the course of 12 months. Or to put it another way, it will never pay for itself, economically speaking.

I’m still experimenting, and will probably add more panels (and more ‘load), but so far, I’m happy as a pig in the proverbial with it. The problems will arise however as winter descends (and that €66.26 total will be in doubt). In those (in)famous words, A lot done, more to do.

Amateur Radio, Computing, IPv6

PB/PG 2.2.1 Released

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From Bent Bagger, OZ6BL:

—
I’m happy to announce release 2.2.1 of PB/PG for Linux.

PB and PG for Linux are programs used for download from and upload to
digital satellites (Pacsats) supporting the FTL0 protocol. This
software allows you to directly communicate with the Microsat series
of satellites. It provides a Curses (Ncurses) based user interface. It
features automatic directory fill requests and simple, rules based
file download requests.

This release serves two purposes:

1) To show that the project is still alive and kicking

2) To correct a number of small ‘inconveniencec’ and to add a few new
features. These changes/additions are described in the document
‘ReleaseNotes’ q.v. (included in the release)

PB/PG for Linux may be downloaded (in source form only) from one of
these places:

– http://www.fern.dk/pgpg/pbpg-2.2.1.tar.gz
– http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/apps/ham/pbpg-2.2.1.tar.gz
– ftp://ftp.amsat.org/amsat/software/Linux/pbpg-2.2.1.tar.gz

I may be contacted using this address:  oz6bl (at) amsat (dot) org

Happy hamming

Best 73 de Bent/OZ6BL
 —

I submitted some rather simple patches to the package including IPv6 patches to allow it communicate to a server running predict (which has also been patched for IPv6 support), which were included, then I helped test them with my home station.  Even though I’m only using a vertical antenna, I was able to upload to and download from  the satellite quite successfully on most passes. It’s kinda cool actually, not something one does every day 🙂