[aprssig] Screen Scraping of findU

[Steve Dimse]

On Jan 6, 2006, at 6:35 PM, Robert Bruninga wrote:

> Since the highest update we usually see or encourage
> on APRS is 1 minute, it would seem reasonable maybe
> to poll at a 1 min rate, unless you are tracking several
> then maybe 30 secs?   Just a guess.  Usually best to
> but some limits on user settings to keep things within
> bounds... when it impacts others....  just a thought .

NO!

This is incredibly inefficient. If you have code that wants to get  
live data, you connect to the APRS IS and get it there.

findU is not the backend for other people's code. I produced things  
like rawposit and rawwx for programs like xastir, that request (on a  
user's command) a single download of a block of data. You can load an  
hour, a week, or a month of a track at once, and then continue to  
update the track based on live data from a TNC or the APRS IS. Any  
unauthorized automated polling of findU is against the terms of  
service, and when I see it (and I know have a scanning tool that will  
catch people doing this I will block their IP. I realize with dynamic  
IP's this will be a bit of a struggle, but the effect on the server  
necessitates it. I'd much rather spend my limited time on the  
computer coding cool new things, but it looks like I have no choice  
but to play bad cop...

Steve K4HG