SmartLink service needs to be more robust

Steve K9ZW

If "the net" is broke, it's broke.

Affected a lot more than SmartLink.  Microsoft lost parts of their Office 365 and other cloud services for some clients. 

As a reminder it is possible to run your shack remotely WITHOUT SmartLink.  Many did this with various VPN setups long before SmartLink.

It is of course possible to break those too - whether the individual VPN or overall connectivity.

Even with SmartLink mostly being up I've kept my Raspberry-Pi based VPN system on the ready. 

This may be a useful idea for those of us who really would be put out by other outages.   

Additionally redundant options might appeal (I know I like to have options.)

While we think of redundancy, it is a good time to think of what happens when the mains power goes down, and if we have enough "shack spares" on hand to bridge a critical failure?

I know I have been a bit lazy on sorting some of these items out. 

While a person may not need a hot-swappable shack with full backups, it might be a good idea to have a "Plan B" configuration if items go down or need to be taken offline for service.

Great thoughts Tilman SM0JZT and everyone else.  I know you made me think about how robust I have my end setup and what my fallback alternatives are.

73

Steve
K9ZW

K2KXK

When I first experienced the outage and thought about it I thought, well no big deal and like some have commented, this is a hobby and a little potential inconvenient is nothing important.  However, after reflecting a little more, I have slightly changed my views.  Although ham radio is primarily a hobby and not a necessity, there are times when it is critical for the community.  My club for example has a very active RACES Group and is a significant component of the county emergency services plan.  It occurred to me that remote access to Flex equipment could be very important in an emergency.  It is something that communities around the world depend on.  Just a thought that Flex may want to factor into their approach for remote access and support.

Mike-VA3MW

Thanks guys for all your opinions.  I know your thoughts will be reviewed.

One last thing, and that is if your remote operation is mission critical for what every reason, you do need to ensure that you personally limit your single points of failures.  Every remote operator goes through this.   In this case, having a Softether VPN in place might not be a bad Plan B.

Again, thanks for all your comments.

Mike