Ham radio does distant data networking: A new protocol runs on simple hardware and supports IPv4 - [Resources_Hands On]

I HAVE BEEN A HOBBYIST AND MAKER FOR ALMOST 15 years now. I like inventing things and diving into low-level things. In 2013, I was looking at a protocol called NBP, used to create a data network over amateur radio links. NBP was developed in the 2000s as a potential replacement for the venerable AX.25 protocol that's been in use for digital links since the mid-1980s. I believed it was possible to create an even better protocol with a modern design that would be easier to use and inexpensive to physically implement. It took six years, but the result is New Packet Radio (NPR), which I chose to publish under my call sign, F4HDK, as a nom de plume. It supports today's de facto universal standard of communication-the Internet's IPv4-and allows data to be transmitted at up to 500 kilobits per second on the popular 70-centimeter UHF ham radio band. Admittedly, 500 kb/s is not as fast as the megabits per second that flow through amateur networks such as the European Hamnet or U.S. AREDN, which use gigahertz frequencies like those of Wi-Fi. But it is still faster than the 1.2 kb/s normally used by AX.25 links, and the 70-cm band permits long-distance links even when obstructions prevent line-of-sight transmissions.