[UK-CONTEST] Telnet

[Steve Bunting]

Hi again everyone,

I have a brief question for you all from a computing innocent.....

I am looking into telnet cluster access to using a GPRS mobile
phone. The idea is to get reliable cluster access from a remote contest
location, RF links have proved to be nothing but trouble. I am trying to
assess the cost of keeping the link live for a 24hour contest. As you
probably know the phone companies charge per MB transferred rather than
unit time, with Orange it is 2.55UKP plus VAT per MB. 

Now my questions: how many bytes constitute one cluster spot? A more
difficult question is how many spots are there per contest weekend? I am
guessing at a mean of 3 spots per minute, i.e. 180 per hour and
therefore 3420 per 24 hours. Lets round that up to a ballpark 5000. Is
that reasonable for a FD? 

I don't want to commit to a route that will cost a fortune to keep
alive, but I am guessing that a single spot is pretty small. If I am
feeling very tight, I can probably reduce traffic (and hence costs) by
setting filters at the cluster.

Can anyone advise or add experiences to this?

Thanks as always.

73
Steve
M0BPQ