Last week some Dutch hams (PA1OKZ, PA4TW, PE1CHL, PE1RJV and me, PH4X) moved over the 44.137.0.0/16 legacy IP-space to a gateway in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Formerly announces by the University of San Diego in California, ping-times were becoming problematic since more and more repeaters with real-time applications used this tunnel.
Moving over the IP-space from San Diego to Amsterdam, ping times dramatically lowered down from 350 milliseconds to less than 10 milliseconds. A big win for DMR, D-star and Echolink to name some real-time applications.
Preparations started with a kick-off meeting in June this year. We needed to plan the migration, find a provider to do the BGP-announcement, find a way to transport the IP-feed from the provider to our current systems, etc. Having a look back, things went quite smoothly. Dutch provider XS4ALL is announcing the IP-space and delivers this in a cabinet already in use by us in the DC2 datacenter. From there, a fiber optical connection transports the IP’s to Hilversum (PI2NOS) and Utrecht (PI3UTR). From there, we are rolling out wireless links throughout the country.
Next: roll out some wireless HAMNET-links and connect more repeaters.
