AllStar over AREDN

Is it possible or has anyone established an AllStar link over AREDN?

I have two projects in mind actually.

I have distributed the pi’s that form the network so there is some geographic redundancy between my place and my dad’s (also a ham). We have backup power which is good.  He is also using a different ISP so we have vendor diversity.

We are line of sight, about 10 miles apart. I have a dual WAN router at my place and want to set it up so if my ISP goes down the network switches to the RF link to my dad’s place and service to the users continues for the Pi’s at my QTH.

This would be a point to point link that I believe I can easily accomplish using openwrt and a ham allocated channel.  However, I have two AREDN nodes and dishes in my basement lab and am curious to see what is possible using the AREDN firmware so I can learn more and possibly use it in any event.

 

Each Pi at my place requires about 100 kbps max, including management and protocol overhead.  I have 5 pi’s total that would be carried over the backup WAN if I had an outage.

 

I hope that explains it sufficiently.

 

2. The other application - I am hoping to use AREDN to connect to my remote HF station which I currently pay a lot of money to an ISP to use.  That station requires me to have access to a remote session (e.g. GetScreenMe – my default, AnyDesk, TeamViewer or similar) to a PC running the rig control and FT8 sofware.  Ideally I could get time sync too, but I could do this with GPS.  Ideally I could also upload contacts to Logbook of the World, but I could also manage that via the terminal program doing the occasional small file transfer.

 

My remote station is within RF range of the nearby AREDN mesh group I am talking to.  I can tunnel to that network from my QTH using a mikrotik HAP.

 

I am not sure this application is possible with AREDN.  Bandwidth is something around 100 kbps max, but I think the issue may be that some of these remote terminal programs register themselves to a server on the net, providing the client with the return route when requested.

 

In a perfect world I would love to provide general internet access to the applications running on the remote PC but I am not sure this is possible as a general application of AREDN.  I realize the need to manage this to ensure the usage is limited/controlled and within the regulations.

a fantastic question was asked.

I do not have photos but I used two Masters Communications RA-35's and cabling I received from URI cables that directly connected to the DB25's on the back of the repeaters.  There is some configuration in the repeater software I had to do and also in the Allstar Hamvoip software  I had to do to get them to work but it is not all that hard to do.  Depending if you are just hanging a simplex node or doing what I did will dictate the amount of programming you will have to do. 

I have figured out #2.  You can simply connect to the remote control app (teamviewer etc) by sending a request to the IP of the remote AREDN node, e.g. the Teamviewer ID is simply 10.x.x.x where the Teamviewer client is listening for connections requests.

Update: TeamViewer is now only allowing outbound connections after you login with your username and password, which means you need a path to the internet first which is not available on our local AREDN mesh.
Solution: Thanks to Ian VE7HHS for this...  use open source TightVNC which is works without any such requirement.  You just need to know the IP address of the AREDN node you are running your remote PC on.  The traffic is also unencrypted in case you are concerned about the relevant regulations.  I have it under test in my AREDN lab setup and so far so good.

The entire public dialogue is at the following ;  

https://groups.io/g/AREDN/topic/allstar_over_aredn/96514739?

visit website for the complete.