The Mumble Radiosport Network for Amateur Radio Contesting
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Rent Your Own Private Mumble Server for Amateur Radio
Thursday, May 25, 2023
Installing and Configuring Mumble for Amateur Radio Remote Contesting
What is Mumble?
Mumble is a free, open-source, high-performance, low-latency audio conferencing server. It’s high quality and low latency, combined with it’s ability to conference, is GREAT for single snd multi-op ham radio use.
There are Mumble clients for Windows, Mac (OSX), Ipad (IOS), Android and Linux. Mumble users communicate on channels. A Mumble client on each end connects to a common "channel", and volia: you have audio. So, as a ham, you’ll need a client at the radio, and a client where your remote operation is taking place from.
This guide will talk about how to configure under Windows. The same concepts can be used to configure for other operating systems.
Getting Mumble...
To download Mumble, go to www.mumble.com and select the version of Mumble appropriate for your operating system. For most, this is 64-bit Windows, and the download link is:
https://download.mumble.com/en/mumble_client-1.4.230.x64.msi
After you install the client, run it.
When you first start Mumble, it automatically runs a bunch of Wizards. You should cancel out of ALL of them. Why? One reason is because it will fill your server list with 1000 servers you will never use! The other is it is much waste to configure Audio until later in the process. Once you have Mumble up, go to the Server->Connect menu or press the World icon.
For testing and experimentation purposes, I have quite a few ham radio Mumble Servers. See my post about them. You are fee to use them as long as you need. They are geographically diverse, so you should pick one close to you.
If you are interested in your own server, I’m happy to set you up with a local, private server close to you, for $10/year. Email me at gerry[at]w1ve.com if interested.
Let’s get connected to a server.
Click the "Add New..," button in the server diaog. You will see this:
The DNS name or IP Address goes in the Address box. You can choose from my server list above or enter the address of a server you know.
Port 64738 is the default Mumble port (it’s TCP). You may have been given info for a different port on your server. If you have, enter that.
For the username, I typically have this convention:
- If on the radio side, enter “Radio”, or something descriptive, like “TS-590”.
- For the Remote, operate side, enter the callsign, like “W1VE”
he Label is just a label. Often, I make it the same as the DNS name.
Click OK.
Connecting to a Mumble Server for the first time:
Bring up the Server dialog: (remember, click Server->Connect, or click the Globe icon) Double-click a server, or highlight one and click “Connect”.
NOTE: These next steps ONLY happen the first time you connect to a new server!
You will be presented with an Accept Certificate dialog that looks like this:
Mumble uses TLS encryption (yes, all audio is encrypted). In order to do that, it needs certificates. These are self-signed certificates.
The next dialog will be:
Working with Mumble
Here’s a connected session:
Public Mumble Servers for Contesting on Radiosport.Network
All servers run using the default mumble port. All servers use the password: Demo!
If you have trouble connecting, use my blog post about Configuring Mumble for Amateur Radio use.
DNS Name Location Notes
na.audio.radiosport.network New York, NY 10GBe Ethernet; best for east coast USA,
Carribean.
west.audio.radiosport.network Seattle, WA 10GBe Ethernet; best for west coast USA,
western Canada, KL7, VY1
northwest.audio.radiosport.network Seattle, WA Serving West Coast USA
arctic.audio.radiosport.network Winnipeg, MB VY1, VY0, Central Canada, Midwest US
asia.audio.radiosport.network LA, CA Serviing Asia, West Coast
sa.audio.radiosport.network Miami, FL Serving South America
eu.audio.radiosport.network Munich, Germany low-latency 100MBps server, best for
western Europe.
eu2.audio.radiosport.network London, UK 10GBe Ethernet, serving all of Europe.
reasonable ping times to USA. Best if station-side in Europe.
tampa.audio.radiosport.network Tampa, FL Excellent service to southern USA,
Carribean
phoenix.audio.radiosport.network Phoenix, AZ 10GBe Service to Southwest, west coast.
More coming on line soon. Stay tuned. Question? Drop me an email at gerry[at]w1ve.com
Monday, May 15, 2023
Hello and Welcome!
Hello and welcome to blog.radiosport.network, a place to learn about using the Mumble audio conferencing for use in Amateur Radio contesting.
Radiosport.Network is a domain I own, and primarily use it as DNS for users and computers doing Amateur Radio contesting.
At the moment, I host many Mumble Audio Conferencing servers, located in various geographic locations around the world, to provide low-latency audio to contest stations and remote operators.
The public servers are free to use; I you want to create your own private Mumble server, and need a DNS name, I am happy to provide Domann Name service free of charge.
If you are a contester just starting out on remote, you are welcome to try my servers. There are no usage limits.
If you are in a part of the world where the closest server is far away, perhaps we can try to find a high-performance server located closer to your location.
Why not locate your Mumble server at your station?
There are many reasons. Perhaps you have limited bandwidth. Perhaps you are just using a residential internet service where bandwidth may be shared. There's probably a good chance that you, or some of your operators do not have a good path to your station endpoint.
My Mumble servers are hosted on Virtual Private Servers, which I lease from hosting companies. I pick VPS locations that have prime peering arrangements with the top internet backbone companies. This pretty much guarentees a high level of performace to most locations. To give you an example, my eu2.audio.radiosport.network server is located in London, UK. From my home QTH in New Hampshire, USA, it has a 30mS ping time. From Germany, the server latency is 15ms. From Bulgaria, the server is 25mS away. As an example of performance, a group of US and German youths operated LZ5R in Bulgaria for the YOTA contest, with the ops in the US and Germany. The audio was flawless for the entire contest.
Read my forthcoming blog posts for information on my publicly available servers and connection information.
-- Gerry W1VE
Rent Your Own Private Mumble Server for Amateur Radio
I am offering rental of a very fast Mumble Server for $10 a year. The plan includes the creation of a Mumble server which will have Three R...
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What is Mumble? Mumble is a free, open-source, high-performance, low-latency audio conferencing server. It’s high quality and low latency, c...
-
All servers run using the default mumble port. All servers use the password: Demo! If you have trouble connecting, use my blog post abou...
-
I am offering rental of a very fast Mumble Server for $10 a year. The plan includes the creation of a Mumble server which will have Three R...