[aprssig] EchoLink APRS-IS Ojbects Mothballed

[Keith VE7GDH]

Bob WB4APR wrote...

> The original intent of APRS was to have something that worked 
> any-time, anywhere, and did the best and most consistent job at 
> delivering real-time information fast, while not cluttering the 
> network with old info. In otherwords it did not require a highly 
> trained or clever operator to figure out the best settings under each 
> circumstance. And on the flip side, then the network be vulnerable to 
> incorrect sesttings most of the rest of the time.

I tried entering some stupid settings... you can only enter two digits 
for the the maximum number of tries, so that is limited to 99. With that 
setting, the shortest retry interval it will allow you to enter is 198 
seconds. If you go to the other end of the spectrum, the shortest retry 
interval you can enter is 7 seconds, and with that setting, you can only 
enter a maximum of 3 tries. Neither setting would really clutter the 
network. The help clearly explains the settings and the relationship 
between them, and it won't let you enter settiings outside those 
parameters. My settings of 5 retries with an interval of 10 seems "OK" 
to me.

> Yes, it is flexible, in the hands of someone who is cognizant of the 
> network impacts of his settings, but that sometimes leads to 
> indfficiencies due to the human nature of error.

As mentioned above, you can't really abuse the network with improper 
settings. Improper settings could lead to retries beinig spaced out by a 
ridiculous amount of time.

> I do not mean to sound critical when I raise these point, I only bring 
> them up to help provide some background to anyone who might want to 
> some day write a current APRS client program so we can move onward.

No problem! When you say "popular clients" or "simplistic clients" or 
"many clients" or "most follow-on APRS" I usually assume that you are 
referring to UI-View - hi! UI-View still works as well as it ever did, 
but I know that eventually someone will write a "replacement" that does 
everything and without needing add-ons, does it better, removes 
limitations in displaying new symbols, doesn't allow you to enter 
abusive settings, has excellent mapping options, and so on. I may not be 
the first to try it, but I would be among the first to urge adoption if 
it worked well. With that said, I've never even used Xastir, but with 
all the good things I hear about it, I'm surprised more people aren't 
recommending it. Maybe the replacement is here and we just don't know it 
yet.

73 es cul - Keith VE7GDH
--
"I may be lost, but I know exactly where I am!"