Quickstart
So you're a licensed amateur radio operator, you're interested in IP networking, and you want to combine the two. AMPRNet is for you. This Quickstart guide can help get you set up quickly.
A system diagram showing 44Net is available
To get online with AMPRNet, you will probably want to start with a tunnel connection to the rest of the network. You will need the following:
- A router. This can be a specialized routing device, or a general purpose computer. It probably won't need a lot of compute power, so you can recycle an old PC or something similar.
- An Internet connection that gives you a stable IP address for the rest of the network to talk to you: AMPRNet tunnels pass AMPRNet data between parts of the AMPR network by encapsulating them in non-44net Internet traffic. Static IP addresses are best for this, but IP addresses dynamically assigned to you by your ISP may work if they change infrequently.
Once you have a machine to act as a router and a suitable network connection, do the following:
Click on REGISTER and complete the requested information
- Request a network address allocation from the portal.
- From the portal homepage [1] click on "Request address space".
- Select "IPIP Tunnel Mesh" as the Use Case, see the wiki page on Requesting a block.
- Once your assignment has been granted, register your gateway on the portal.
- Once your gateway has been registered, you need to add an A record for each host on your local network. Note that the main tunnel router at UCSD will NOT pass traffic to an IP address unless that address is associated with a hostname in the ampr.org domain.
- Configure your router to act as a Gateway to the rest of the network.
That's it! You now have a tunnel to the rest of the network. From here, you can connect devices via RF links, subnet your network if you like, and start exploring TCP/IP over amateur radio.
Next Steps
Once you are connected, you should subscribe to the 44Net mailing list.