AREDN Presentations at SCALE 17X March 10, 2019

There will be two AREDN presentations at the 17th Annual Southern California Linux Expo – SCALE 17X – to be held on March 7-10, 2019 at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California, near Los Angeles.

Both presentations will be on Sunday afternoon, March 10 in room 212.

The first talk by Orv Beach, W6BI is titled “The Ham Radio Internet - a Progress Report”. It will start at 15:00 in Room 212.

Orv reports that IP Networking is one of the fastest growing modes in amateur radio.  The ham radio internet (lower-case eye) continues to grow in both capabilities and span. Driven by improvements in custom open source software for wireless access points by AREDN (arednmesh.org) and with their support of more equipment from more vendors, it now covers from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border and east at least to the Inland Empire.  At any given time, there are more than 300 nodes up and running.

He will detail that growth with emphasis on Southern California, with metrics, maps and graphs.  He'll also cover some of the more significant network events, including the ability to stream video of recent brush fires from networked mountaintop webcams to YouTube.

Following Orv’s talk will be Joe Ayers, AE6XE who will present “ AREDN: The technology and considerations to build ad-hoc wireless networks”. His talk will also be in room 212 starting at 16:30.

Joe says that off-grid long distance wireless networks are rapidly growing on Amateur Radio Microwave allocations across cities and counties around the world.  Ham radio operators are repurposing low cost wireless ISP devices.  Neighbors are connecting with each other across the street, cities are connecting police stations with community centers, and counties are connecting to create regional links, now common, over 40 miles.

Joe will detail the goals of the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network - AREDN (arednmesh.org), the open source technology, the wireless capabilities, the network architecture, and the considerations to deploy long distance microwave links. He’ll also show examples of devices commonly used for sector coverage. point-to-point links, and wide area coverage.  Anyone with an entry level amateur radio technician class license will walk away with the knowledge to create their own off-grid internet.

Remember that Daylight Savings Time starts on that Sunday, so set your alarms correctly.

Registration information for SCALE 17X can be found at this link.

SCALE 17X will be held at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E Green St, Pasadena, CA,  The Convention Center phone number is (626) 449-7360.

Directions to the Pasadena Convention Center can be found here.

The primary website for SCALE 17X with a schedule of speakers can be found here.