[aprssig] APRS-IS vs. FireNet

[Steve Huston]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Pete Loveall AE5PL Lists
<hamlists at ametx.com> wrote:
> You are trying to use Firenet for an IGate and the Firenet servers specifically do not support IGates.  This is due to the intent of the Firenet vs. APRS-IS.  The APRS-IS primary purpose today is to interconnect amateur radio RF APRS networks.  This means it is expected that -any- and -all- packets seen in the APRS-IS network may end up on RF somewhere in the world.  Firenet, on the other hand, is an experimental subnet without that restriction and encourages experimentation with higher activity feeds than what APRS-IS is designed for.  Because of this, APRS-IS servers support "recently heard" lists to support IGates running on filtered feeds; Firenet servers do not support "recently heard" lists so people do not connect IGates to their servers, only GUI clients, database collectors, or other non-RF application.

Is that a recent change?  My station has been down for a long time
(tree got too close to the antenna and gave it too vigorous of a hug,
haven't replaced it nor cut the tree back yet) but looking through my
old Xastir config I see I was connecting to Firenet as I thought I
recalled and I don't recall having those sorts of problems.  I also
see this at the top of http://info.aprs.net/index.php?title=FireNet :

  "It carries the full APRS-IS feed PLUS the additional types of
objects listed below. The tie-in between FireNet and APRS-IS allows
station positions and messages to transfer between the systems, but
the special FireNet objects do not get sent to APRS-IS."

That leads me to believe Max's use case is specifically allowed.  But
again, I've been out of it for some time and could have missed some
messages describing these changes!

-- 
Steve Huston - W2SRH - Unix Sysadmin, PICSciE/CSES & Astrophysical Sci
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