[aprssig] Why Not "Gate in Vicinity" (phones)

[Pete Loveall AE5PL Lists]

But the problem stems back to the IGate becoming the arbiter on what gets gated to RF and must ensure proper operation.  Since it is impossible to reasonably differentiate between one type of Internet connected client and another and because you can't ensure proper client configuration, the idea of "gating to RF if in the vicinity" leaves you open to numerous issues including stations "spammng" the local RF.  If they want to communicate with an RF station, they can.  If an RF station wants to communicate with them, they can.  They just can't say that because they are in an area their beacons will automatically go to RF.  That's not the way IGates work and if you try to make them work that way, you are back to having indiscriminate spamming of a frequency and/or packets dropped that should be gated to RF (if the channel is loaded, even a "reasonable" gate rate could cause it to be unusable for communicating).

Again, this is not a "let's see if we can get cell phone generated beacons seen on RF issue" as some have presented.  This is a more basic issue of what is APRS-IS and what is the function of IGates.  The basic function is to provide RF-RF connectivity and the IGate's function is to facilitate this by gating all heard packets (within stated constraints) to APRS-IS and to gate to RF messages (with associated posits) that are addressed to "local" RF stations.  Everything beyond that is simply an IGate sysop's decision of what else they can -safely- gate to RF that might be of interest to the local RF operators.  That decision has nothing to do with who might be in the area on APRS-IS only.

73,

Pete Loveall AE5PL
pete at ae5pl dot net

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Bruninga
> Sent: Monday, December 26, 2011 12:04 PM
> 
> A smart-phone AP in use by a ham should be seen on local RF in my opinion.
> So to answer the question of how-often, I'd propose this rule: