radioAe6rt

In the last year I’ve done some JXTA programming
and wondered how I could use it in the context of amateur radio operating. JXTA is Sun’s
P2P programming platform.

Here’s one idea: A fully distributed peer-to-peer ham radio beacon network.

Using the JXTA platform, operators can create and participate
in a fully distributed P2P beacon network. Used as a standalone app
or in conjunction with suitable logging software, when a contact is
logged between one QTH
and another, the JXTA app publishes an
advertisement to the JXTA network, for all other operators running
similar software to see. Advertisements contain respective QTHs,
the band, and perhaps respective signal reports and power used at each
station. The advertisement effectively announces in real time that the
band by some definition supports propagation between the two locations. Every operator running the
software thereby becomes a node in worldwide distributed beacon network,
advertising band openings as they are observed.

I’ve already written version 1 of this app, which I call Beacon, and
even attempted to integrate it into Mike Loukides’s
JL Logger. The app is laying around on my disk in rough
form. Here are a couple screenshots, with purely fictional contacts. Beacon is written in cross-platform Java,
so it runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows with an installed Java Virtual
Machine. It probably needs some work to suppress displaying duplicate
advertisements from the two operators involved in a contact - if both
are participating fully as publishers in the network.

DX clusters already offer similar features, but if integrated into popular logging tools, band opening advertisements
could be automated. Moreover, the point of Beacon is not to be so specific as to identify remote stations and
operating frequency, although it could, but to simply make known propagation conditions that supported
the global distance contact.

To turn it into a working service, a couple of operators would would
need to run a 24×7 JXTA sandbox rendezvous and relay peers with public
Internet connectivity, to which the world would connect to route the
Beacon advertisements. This set of dedicated JXTA rendezvous and relay peers
probably wouldn’t do enough work to break
a sweat, but are necessary to building the network. Linux or a Mac OS X
would be the platform of choice for this piece. If you’re interested
in working on this, leave a comment. Maybe we
can make something happen.

Although I’ve done some JXTA programming, I don’t know much about the
real world security issues JXTA services may have. It’s a wild, woolly
world out there. If Beacon does get deployed, the 24×7 rendezvous/relay
servers should be walled-off and otherwise contain no data you
ultimately can’t live without.

update: 10/25/2005: see AE6RT Beacon release info