HR2.0 - M17 Project - New Ham Radio Digital Mode

M17 Project is a new Digital Voice Mode in Ham Radio. Today we talk to the folks in charge of the project. Website: https://m17project.org

 

“The goal here should be to kick the proprietary protocols off the airwaves, replace DMR, Fusion, D-Star, etc. To do that, it’s not just good enough to be open, it has to be legitimately competitive.”
Sounds good. I sincerely wish them to succeed.

 

good stuff! thanks!

 

The various encryption schemes will have the usual suspects trying to get everyone involved kicked off ham radio in 5.......4...........3..........2.....
* seriously, why is this in there? This is like walking into a field full of bulls spray painted bright red.

 

Pandering to the Emmcommers (need encryption for health data!) and Preppers (Wolverines!).

Chris

 

So they should pay for commercial license and use whatever they want.

 

Not true at all. You should try reading a little bit first.

The project is entirely open source. Documented. No secret encodings.

Not like all the other digital voice modes that use AMBE codec chips.

 

What part of my statement is untrue?
Nobody said anything about *secret* encodings. The standard plainly supports AES, which is an open standard.
https://m17-protocol-specification.readthedocs.io/en/latest/application_layer.html#encryption-types
That said, encryption of radio signals is just about universally illegal for Amateurs, so with this being a protocol aimed at Amateurs, this is a dubious feature at best.

I stand by what I said, inclusion of encryption is to attract the Walter Mitty types who thing the things they do specifically within the Amateur Radio space needs to be encrypted despite it being illegal. As stated up thread, people with a defined need for such things should consider other radio services.

While I used a pithy comic to convey the thought, I thoroughly believe this will result in further dilution of the digital voice "community" in amateur radio, not a unification. We'll end up with four competing standards with all the interoperability issues we currently have with 3.

Chris

 

Here's what the specification says:

"Encryption is optional. The use of it may be restricted within some radio services and countries, and should only be used if legally permissible."

https://m17-protocol-specification.readthedocs.io/en/latest/application_layer.html

You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

 

Yup, it's optional. But it'll be demanded by the usual suspects just like MARS mods for people who have nothing to do with the MARS program.

And I'm not really making anything of anything. I'm just mocking those usual suspects who have fantasies about what they do or will do with amateur radio.

That said, I do stand by my statement that this will do nothing but dilute the current market, resulting in yet another standard we get to choose from (or worse, orphaned infrastructure when people take it up, then drop it within a year). Remember the original Yaesu WIRES? I have a radio that supports it, but good luck putting that feature to use...

Maybe we'll get lucky and like the network protocol "wars" of the 80s and 90s, a true winner (TCP/IP) will emerge and we'll all standardize on that. However, it took backing from the Federal Govt to make TCP/IP the de facto standard, something we won't get for Amateur Radio digital comms, especially from bit players with fantasies of being disruptive forces.

But, more power to them, I hope they prove me wrong.

Chris

 

You seem certain of that. I doubt AES or GCM or any such would be used on amateur frequencies.

As the spec notes, AES payloads are subject to MITM bit rot, because the protocol has no HMAC to detect it. That's a forehead slapper duh.

But M17 is intended to be used over any RF link or other IP line, where privacy and authentication may be allowed or required.

 

Networking history is more complicated than that. What became TCP/IP suite of protocols started in 1976... It was always intended to be a WAN protocol.

You might be remembering the alphabet soup of NetBEUI, Apple talk, IPX, ... Decent.. XNS.... Expand... ArcNet? All those were LAN protocols. Some were even unrouteable, gasp.

TCP/IP only came out of raised floor on to workstations and PCs when those got several MB of memory. IPX for example ran perfectly well in much less memory. CPU horsepower helped too.

US Government didn't affect any of that.

The bit player yappy dog against TCP/IP was ISO. Remember those bozos? Took them 10 years to write a spec that was guaranteed not to work, meanwhile industry had interoperability faires connecting TCP/IP and demonstrating working together.

Maybe you knew all that.