[aprssig] Why Not "Gate in Vicinity"

[Heikki Hannikainen]

On Thu, 22 Dec 2011, Pete Loveall AE5PL Lists wrote:

> some of those "smartphone" apps can be.  VE4HTO-14 is transmitting a 
> beacon from his APRSDroid software every 5 seconds (or faster) which 
> would wipe out any general APRS RF channel and make it unusable if those 
> beacons were gated to RF.  Of course, his email address on QRZ is 
> invalid so there is no way to ask nicely that he reduce the beacon rate.

By the way, aprx (the software which used to have the APRSIS srccall for 
telemetry bug) has a very nice rate limiting feature for digipeating to 
RF. It should be able to provide some protection against heavy 
misconfigurations like this in any software (either aprx itself or 
something on the other side of the IS).

        ratelimit      60 120      # default: average 60 packets/minute,
                                   #          burst max 120 packets/minute

The values are for example only, 60 packets / minute is quite a lot 
already. It'll drop packets going out on the RF port exceeding this 
setting, so that the channel won't be completely flooded.

   - Hessu