[aprssig] Msg reply path

[Tony VE6MVP]

At 04:23 AM 2013-10-04, Lynn W. Deffenbaugh (Mr) wrote:

<snip>

>So, until all of the above are completely gone from the network and 
>the entire planet is fully WIDEn-N compliant (which means replacing 
>a bunch of obsolete hardware that cannot be made fully compliant), I 
>for one am not going to release software whose default settings 
>don't work in some areas.  The support aspects are overwhelming.

Fair enough.   I keep forgetting about those because I don't see any 
in my usual area of travel in western Canada.    Leave the settings 
to default as is then but give the rest of the amateur population the 
abiltity to enable the proper tools to use the APRS system in the 
proper fashion.

>Besides, just because you received a message that says AB7-3 doesn't 
>mean you need to transmit an entire AB7-7 path.  In actual fact an 
>AB7-4 or AB7-5 might be sufficient.  Only a human can know for sure 
>(or at least make a better guess).

Sure but so what.    xx7-7 is only going to be used for occasional 
testing and disasters.  Normally from my location I'd use AB7-3 to 
get into the big city.

>And the logical extension to this is to simply reverse the used 
>portion of the path asking the response message to go back out 
>through the digipeaters that delivered it.  That also doesn't work 
>because it's not necessarily true that if A can hear B on the way 
>here then B can hear A on the way back.  Reversing used digipeaters 
>explicitly is, IMHO, less likely to succeed than using a beefed-up alias.

I do completely agree with your reasoning there.   One of the very 
nice features of the APRS system is the redundant nature of the 
network of digi's and the dupe suppression of the digi's.

>Now, if you were to ask software authors to make the received path 
>of message packets visible to the user and provide a QSO-specific 
>manually-entered outbound message path override (which of course, 
>defaults to the station's normal beacon path), that might be a step 
>in the right direction.

That's be a step but in my opinion only a partial one.  What about 
the acks?  I get a message from James VE6SRV who is five hops away on 
an AB path and my acks only go out WIDE2-2.   So now my system sends 
out a number of acks that will never, ever make it to him.

Tony 
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