[aprssig] Weather Stations and Net Neutrality

[Daron Wilson]

> a 5 minute rate DIRECT is perfectly acceptible.  But a 5 minute rate
> from a digi-hill top using a path of WIDE2-2 is eauivalent to a mobile
> with a 3 hop path.  THis is considered uncacceptible in many areas.
> 
> We must fine tune our network to make sure we do not have legacy
> systems operating at 5 minute rates that are using abusive hops or at
> least hops that do not consider the surrounding terrain, location of
> IGates and NWS stations.

I think the key here is 'in many areas'.  We can throttle everything back to
30 minutes and have a nice quiet network....or increase it all to 3 minutes
and have it overloaded, or find the happy medium that gets as much current
data out there to those desiring it without overloading the network.  I
think if we had 50 mobiles in the area covered by our 11 weather stations, I
might look at the rates and consider the issues.  However, having about 8-12
on a regular basis on the 100 miles of the left coast that we cover, 5
minute weather isn't causing the network to be overloaded.

The fact that it gets to Igates is secondary, we lost those when we were out
of power/phone/cell service/etc. for 4 days last winter, but guess what, we
still had five minute weather at the EOC's and the NWS was still able to
pick it up via RF.

> I ask everyone to look at their local WX station.
> Look at the PHG data for that site.
> If it is a high-digi site, look at its path.
> If it is anything over WIDE1-1, then question it...
> 
> Of course, if 2 hops is necessary to get to the NWS, then use the path
> of WIDE2-1,DIGIX. THis gives two hops to the NWS site in the direction
> of DIGIX, but only 1 hop everywhere else (equivalent to a 2 hop path in
> most areas)...

That is worth considering, however, that assumes the only value of the
weather data from the affected area is to get it to the NWS, which seems
rather shortsighted.  A severe weather event in a neighboring community
could be of interest to us and vice versa as the weather front is moving.

> Everyone of us needs to look at our local networks for legacy systems
> that are not being good stewards of our bandwidth and then help in the
> fine tuning to improve performance by fixing legacy systems with unfair
> high rate/paths.

Very true, and let's also consider what benefit the local network provides
to us when weighing the options.  We use the network to provide weather and
telemetry FAR more than to report the position of moving vehicles.  So for
our little part of the world, weather is a feature we are very interested in
supporting.

Thanks,

N7HQR