[aprssig] Why Not "Gate in Vicinity"

[Georg Lukas]

* Pete Loveall AE5PL Lists <hamlists at ametx.com> [2011-12-23 13:40]:
> Instead of focusing on how to make IGates throttle output, make them
> do what they were originally specified to do: gate all packets heard
> to APRS-IS, gate to RF messages addressed to "local" stations heard on
> RF and associated posits.

This basically means that APRS-IS is going to stay a second class
network, thus reducing the overall usability of APRS. When you are using
"real" APRS, you will not see any of the nearby IS stations, missing
potential QSOs.

Instead, I would suggest per-callsign throttling: it would prevent
misconfigured stations from flooding HF, while maintaining the same
"view" both on RF and on IS.

However, as it is now, you already need luck if you want a message from
IS to RF to actually arrive at the receiver, as many iGates are RX-only
anyway.

> And cellphone app authors need to understand that the APRS-IS is -not-
> their own private Internet network and is primarily there to
> interconnect amateur radio RF APRS networks.

I do indeed fully understand this. As I already stated in a previous
message, the problem is due to a hard to reproduce bug in the
application which I am still investigating. Feel free to send me a
private message if you see another APDRxx station misbehave.

> Authors, take responsibility for your software and limit
> configurations and distribution of passcodes.

Indeed, the manual validation of radio amateurs to decide if somebody
you have never met is allowed to obtain a passcode is taking away
significant time which could be better spend on improving the APRS
application. It must be great for the community that most amateurs do
not know that instead of waiting for several days they could just run a
10-line script to generate a passcode for any callsign (or any other
sequence of characters) themselves.


Kind regards and Merry christmas,

Georg DO1GL
-- 
APRSdroid - Open Source APRS Client for Android ++ http://aprsdroid.org/m
     ++ https://market.android.com/details?id=org.aprsdroid.app ++
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