[aprssig] RE: APRS Message Idea

[Curt, WE7U]

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 dick at kb7zva.com wrote:

> >As far as setting up a "test net", have at it.  Nothing prevents you
> >from testing on your own, disconnected server ;-)  But just because you
> >can make something work doesn't mean it should be put on APRS-IS.  The
> >Firenet group is a great example of understanding that.
> >73,
> >Pete Loveall AE5PL
>
> Not really. If I send an object to RF, it will enter the APRS-IS from
> another source. IGates.
>
> We also saw how Firenet could be abused. Someone could easily take those
> objects and flood them to RF. Once that happened they WOULD appear on the
> APRS-IS, because they re-entered the APRS-IS from IGates that heard them
> on RF.

How is that abusing Firenet?  Seems that an errant Igate would be
abusing APRS-IS in that case.  Go after the igate operator, or the
author of the igate software who coded it wrong (yes, I'm well aware
that could be me in the future, but if I make mistakes like that, I
try to correct them).


> This is not to currently criticise the folks at Firenet. When they first started
> the 'Sea of Blue', they experimented with the APRS-IS in the art of mass flooding.
> There is nothing in place that prevents an 'object' from entering the APRS-IS if it
> is sent to RF.

Actually, there was no "firenet" as such until after the "sea of
blue" discussion, where people didn't want to see all the weather
objects.  We've been very happy "flooding" our Firenet servers with
10,000 to 15,000 objects of all types, having to do with weather and
lots of other useful public service type objects.


> The truth of the matter is that Firenet objects are seen on the APRS-IS. I think
> we can expect to see more of this happening... ECHOLINKs, WINLinks, etc. are good
> examples.

You're funny!  What I recall is that echolink/winlink objects were
posted by someone else, not firenet folk, to the aprs-is, and posted
directly to aprs-is.  Don't confuse firenet stuff with that.  Yea,
we were posting our objects to Firenet as well, but you're confusing
two different folks here.  There were two people generating them.
Firenet had nothing to do with the APRS-IS objects you were seeing.


> Firenet opened a whole new thinking process to experimenters. One thing that would
> help prevent flooding to RF and back into the APRS-IS, would be TCPXX.

And all igate software uses that as far as I know.  Xastir does.  It
skips gating RF->INET if TCPIP/TCPXX/RFONLY/NOGATE are seen in a
packet.


> The APRS-IS is unmanaged, therefore we all have opinions on what's acceptable.
> Everything has to start somewhere... how do we know it doesn't belong on the APRS-IS?
> The Firenet Group was a great example of yielding to persuasion, and adapting to
> some basic common sense. I could be wrong, but I don't think Firenet is a popular
> concept.

I don't recall EVER seeing any comments among the Firenet guys on
the firenet mailing list as to whether or not what we were doing was
popular.  It's not the point dude!  It's a public service.  It
doesn't need to be popular to be successful.  I don't do SAR or
donate money to my local church to be popular either.  It's not the
point.


> The Firenet client base hasn't changed much from it's inception.

Great!  I'm one of them.  Both a user and one of the massive object
generators.  Perl is wonderful for that.


> What's popular,
> if anyone else has noticed is what Bob Bruninga commonly refers to as 'human intervention'. That 'would' include messaging, but not some automated process that promotes mass
> injections, that swamps our average internet connections.

I see you're carrying some excess baggage into the discussion here,
which really has no business getting brought in.

Firenet guys are happy over there playing in their own sandbox, why
aren't you?

If you don't want your internet connection swamped, don't connect
to Firenet.  Problem solved!  An alternative is to connect to a
filtered feed (port 14580) and just snag the type of objects you
want.

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
"The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"