Cisco demonstrates radio linking via internet.

[kc7rad]

Quote[/b] ]NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 24, 2005--Cisco Systems, Inc.® (NASDAQ:CSCO):


(This press announcement is in conjunction with a streaming video web cast today, October 24, at 10:00 a.m. ET. To view the web cast and presentation, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com/webcast/emerging_tech_102405.html)

Cisco Systems, Inc.® (NASDAQ:CSCO) demonstrated today a communication system designed to easily integrate disparate push-to-talk radio systems together with other communication resources like voice, video and data devices. These next generation capabilities are designed to allow organizations to easily collaborate on daily operations, safety, security, and emergency management across different networks, both wired and wireless.

Cisco touted its advanced capabilities in Cisco Internet Protocol (based) Interoperability and Collaboration Systems (IPICS) technology and has announced that this will be a new emerging technology area of focus for the company.

Essentially, Cisco has developed a new systems-based approach which can improve operational efficiency, streamline organizational decision making and emergency safety and security management. Potential organizations that could benefit from these capabilities include large enterprises as well as transportation, retail, finance, public safety, and defense groups.

"Cisco views IP as the future for all communications systems," said Charles Giancarlo, Chief Development Officer, Cisco Systems. "Cisco IPICS technology has the potential to deliver a platform to provide an inexpensive solution for pervasive radio interoperability that helps organizations dynamically manage the flow of all types of information, collaborate across multiple networks and organizations, and improve overall operational effectiveness and efficiency."



Read the whole thing here, at businesswire.com (http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20051024005489&newsLang=en)

What irritates me (and I know some may view me as a rabel-rouser) is that in NONE of the 24 articles I read this morning had ANY reference to ham radio, IRLP or EchoLink! #Everyone made it seem as if this was something completely new!

Regardless of what you may think of these two ham radio tools, failure to give credit where credit is due, is, IMHO, a disservice to those who built and support the IRLP and EchoLink networks.

73's
Ken
KC7RAD

[ys1cf]

I have nothing to do with it! seriously

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #Cisco YS1CF http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[N5KRC]

What makes you think it was "something completely new" when Echolink and IRLP came along? Even they were not the first two applications to link radios, they are just the two that became most popular and now dominate the Internet-linking-radio-market.


edited to add:
But you're right. We have always been, and probably will always be, the guys behind the scene that barely gets a pat on the back. When cell phones first came out, nobody made it public that hams built the pathway for the carriers to follow. Just part of the job I guess.

Scott, N5KRC

[WA2ZDY]

Quote[/b] (N5KRC @ Dec. 13 2005,16:47)]. . . When cell phones first came out, nobody made it public that hams built the pathway for the carriers to follow. #Just part of the job I guess.
And don't forget Hedy Lamarr's indirect involvement in cell phone technologies She was awarded a patent during WW2 for a multiplexing technology.

One never knows where creativity will be found.

[KC7UP]

Just saw Hedy Lamar on TMC chnl last night. Looks as good as when I was a young man. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif
Curt

[W5HTW]

Quote[/b] (WA2ZDY @ Dec. 13 2005,14:05)]Quote[/b] (N5KRC @ Dec. 13 2005,16:47)]. . . When cell phones first came out, nobody made it public that hams built the pathway for the carriers to follow. Just part of the job I guess.
And don't forget Hedy Lamarr's indirect involvement in cell phone technologies She was awarded a patent during WW2 for a multiplexing technology.

One never knows where creativity will be found.
Gosh, and she wasn't even a ham. That isn't fair. We know ALL electronics technology was developed by hams. How did SHE get the right to develop something?

I started to post this on another thread.

I'm not sure who could be "credited" with developing cell phones. They are an outgrowth, I believe, of the mobile phone technology that was just becoming popular at the end of the 1960s and into the early 1970s. Those were developed by Bell Labs, not by hams, and manufactured, as far as I can recall, by Western Electric, a Bell subsidiary. Some may have been contracted to Motorola?? The ones I saw had "Bell Telephone" on the control panel.

Some of those early Bell mobile phones actually operated on "lo-band" - 30-50 mhz, but by probaby 1970-71 had moved to VHF at 151-153 mhz. They were proprietary, of course, licensed by Bell and AT&T. And they were bulky - and they were *expensive!* Like the fee just to have access to one was like $60 1970 dollars a month! Installation extra, and done only be the Telco.

Plus they had no such thing as 'roaming.' Your mobile phone was good only in your home area, and calls were placed through the Bell Systems mobile operator. No direct dialing until probably 1972 or so. And even then, all "roaming" (out of home area) telephone use was placed through the operator. All long distance, in our out of state, was placed through "Mobile operator." That's how she answered when you punched the rig up.

The phones were, of course, two way radios, (as are cell phones) with a large control head, and a trunk-mounted radio, and ran probably 20 watts of RF output, but one of the ones I saw had a "low" power setting so it could be used with the vehicle power off. One of the units I recall had a whole bunch of "memory" buttons - You could push them and direct dial locally! Wow! That one belonged to a casual friend of mine who was a contractor. The control head was mounted on the tranny hump and the "radio" part was mounted on the inside rear wall of the pickup truck, behind the seat.

In fact, sometime in the sixties experiments with HF mobile phone technology was tried, but it didn't fly, as Bell did not have enough HF terminals and they weren't feasible.

By the way, Ms. Larmar's contribution was in the field of clandestine communications, in a form of today's ALE (Automatic Link Establishment.) She proposed that if two way radio could jump from frequency to frequency, the enemy could not guess where it would go next, and therefor could not easily intercept it. That led eventually to the concept of Spread Spectrum, but her intent was secure, clandestine communications.

Along that thread, we had an old frequency search system for a while, in the late sixties, though it was being dismantled. It was an HF system designed to probe propagation from Point A to Point B, but the same principle could be used for clandestine communications. Required a programmed (mechanical) identical system at each point. One sent a pulse. If the other received it, it returned the pulse. If it did not, (and timing was set by monitoring JJY or WWV) within the alloted time, the primary system shifted freq and sent another pulse. The system at B would respond, if it could. This went on day and night, allowing constant monitoring of propagation from the two points.

However, by the late sixties these systems were taken down, as it was easier to just ask the guy on the other end, INT QRK. If the guy checking into Net Control wasn't readable, we QSY'd him. The pioneer ALE-type system was gone.

And on another point, the DOE was using computer tracking of mobile units (trucks carrying nuclear weapons) in the mid 1970s. The precedessor to today's APRS. But I first ran across them in about 1984.

But, if hams are going to get credit, I sure could use some! Then I could buy that new IC-7800! Or two or three!

ed

[WD8OQX]

Regardless of where it actually started, the point is that "HAMS" for a long time now have NOT been given the credit due for there contribution to the advancement of the technological arts. - And that isn't right!!! http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif

[N5KRC]

Don't remember where I read it (hams designing cell phones). Remember the article clearly though, the guy did infact work at Bell Labs, and I do believe it was in the seventies. I guess it's quite possible we can combine our two stories, and it was a ham that worked at Bell Labs in the seventies!

Aww heck, I'm sure I read it on the Internet, it's gotta be true! http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Scott, N5KRC

[KG4RUL]

Remember, when that backhoe digs up the fibre optic bundle, it all turns to crap! The internet is VERY vulnerable infrastructure that, at this point, is not proteced at all. Just the thing that you want mission critical applications to rely on.

Dennis http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[WA5KRP]

Through the years I've been a ham, experimentation and innovations developed by amateurs has invariably wound up being shared with fellow hobbyists. It's freeware. That's not to say employees of companies such as Motorola or GE who happen to be hams don't develop proprietary stuff - of course they do and whatever it happens to be is the property of their employer. Come to think of it, I never saw Art Collins disclose how to make a PTO.

Don't confuse innovations by amateurs with innovations by manufacturers. Amateurs came up with repeaters. The big boys came up with cellular phone networks.


WA5KRP
Texas

[KE5FRF]

Dirty rotten shame, thats all it is. Do you suppose the guy at Cisco who "suggested" this technology idea to the engineers was a ham?

[W0LPQ]

KRP ... since it was patented ... why would he? Art knew better.

Bill, W0LPQ

[K9STH]

HTW:

Actually, Motorola produced all of those mobile telephones that said "Bell" on them and developed the signalling system that was used. The TLD-1000 was the original duplex model and was used with the MTS system which often required an operator to complete the calls. Then when the IMTS system came out, the need for operator assistance went away. Those units were the TLD-1100. Motorola made a conversion kit for the TLD-1000 units so that the logic package for the TLD-1100 could be used. All of these units were 11 channel full duplex.

The lower stages of the transmitter actually provided the injection frequency for the receiver so any problems having to do with frequency multiplication and any mixing products were eliminated. Motorola manufactured all of the control heads and logic packages for both the MTS and IMTS systems. The TLD-1100 was eventually replaced by the Motorola Pulsar which were fully solid-state. The older TLD units were rated at 18 watts output and used a total of 3 tubes, 2 each 12BY7 and the final amplifier was a 5894 (the lower stages were transistors). Frankly, the 5894 never needed to be replaced since it was capable of at least 80 watts output on highband.

The TLD-1100 was also available as the TLD-1470 which was used for RCC (Radio Common Carrier). However, the frequency spacing between the transmit and receive frequencies was different. This required the changing of the 1st mixer crystal in the receiver and retuning of the 1st i.f. strip. Also, RCC use only had 7 channels instead of the 11 that the MTS/IMTS could use. Motorola made "dummy" elements that were plugged into any position that an operational channel was not in place.

When I owned the Motorola reconditioned equipment center for the south-central United States we converted thousands of the TLD-1000 and TLD-1100 units into the TLD-1470 models. But, instead of using the dummy elements for the last 4 channels we just installed a 20 pf disc ceramic capacitor and a jumper onto the main circuit board. That is all that the dummy plug had in it and it was MUCH cheaper to just put the capacitor and jumper on the board.

Many of the RCC operations used 2805 Hz data (MTS and IMTS typically used 1550 Hz). That equipment including the logic boards was made by Secode (owned by Communications Industries that also owned Decibel Products antenna company at that time) which was located here in Dallas, Texas. However, all of the r.f. units were made by Motorola.

General Electric and several other manufacturers did make r.f. packages that could be used for mobile telephones that had logic packages that were compatible with the Motorola units. However, those radios were not very popular and between 80 and 90 percent of the mobile telephones were manufactured by Motorola.

Motorola had a factory technical representative who's sole job was to travel all over the United States and Canada to make sure that all of the various mobile telephone systems were operating properly. Unknown to any of the owners of thess systems the factory representative "hard wired" his particular mobile telephone number into every system so that he could make and receive mobile telephone calls no matter where he was located. Of course there was no record of him making or receiving calls and it would have been virtually impossible for the owner of the system to eliminate this capability from their equipment.

Motorola also had the very first cellular systems in operation anywhere in the world. This was in the late 1970s and the systems were first in the Chicago area. At that time the power output of the units was a maximum of 10 watts, not the 3 watts that generally came into use a few years later (and now most units are like 300 mW). Motorola would sell a unit for $3600 ($100 per month for 3 years) with no interest. But, since there were not any systems in general use, Motorola furnished a reconditioned Pulsar unit at no charge to use until the cellular system was established. My company reconditioned a lot of Pulsar units to provide to those people who were waiting on the cellular service.

As cellular became popular quite a number of different systems were developed. However, in both the old mobile telephone systems and in the cellular systems Motorola was the driving force for quite a number of years.

Glen, K9STH

[K9STH]

KRP:

Unfortunately, repeaters were in use for quite a number of years by the commercial FM two-way operators before they were "discovered" by amateur radio operators.

The first repeaters in the commercial field were in operation in the late 1930s, but it wasn't until the early 1950s that they came into general use.

Although a few amateur radio operators were experimenting with repeaters during the late 1950s, it really wasn't until the later half of the 1960s that amateur radio FM repeaters started to become popular. It was in the first half of the 1970s that the "FM boom" really started.

It was during the period shortly before and then for several years after the time when I was the first FM Editor of CQ Magazine (1971 - 1973) that VHF FM really "took off". There were a number of us in the "early days" that were really "pushing" VHF FM for amateur radio use. Unfortunately, I believe that we definitely "over sold" the mode because of various problems that have happened since.

Glen, K9STH