[aprssig] Stealth digis

[Andrew P.]

The issue was digipeaters that don't beacon to let people know where they are. But that doesn't stop people from using them; if the non-beaconing digpeater still accepts the standard aliases, it will still digipeat a packet it hears using that alias. The ones in my area even do tracing (inserting their callsign-SSID into the digipeat list) so they may be legally identified. The only way a stealth digipeater could avoid digipeating arbitrary packet stations would be to either use only non-standard aliases (that non-participating stations wouldn't know to use) or for the stealth digipeater to use a whitelist/blacklist to restrict for which stations it would digipeat.

So I just find it a bit annoying that those digipeater owners don't want to waste the miniscule amount of bandwidth to send a position report beacon once every 30 minutes to let other users figure out their packet paths that were repeated by the digipeater.

Andrew, KA2DDO

-------- Original message --------
From: Doug Younker <dougy at ruraltel.net>
Date:11/24/2014  19:55  (GMT-05:00)
To: TAPR APRS Mailing List <aprssig at tapr.org>
Subject: Re: [aprssig] Stealth digis

I must be particularly dense this evening.  In the event you are seeing
the transmissions, the transmissions aren't very stealthy are they? What
is the nature of the transmissions that makes you feel they are
digipeaters?  Not that I'd have any answers, I'm just curious. Doesn't
most digipeater firmware and computer applications require settings that
resemble a legal call sign to function, if they are bogus or genuine?
Doug, N0LKK
On 11/5/2014 10:12 AM, Andrew P. wrote:
> Is there a reason to have stealth (non-beaconing) digipeaters? There
> are some folks in my area who want to hide their digis from the
> general public (supposedly to keep excess traffic off those digis).
> But, if those digis support WIDEn-N aliases, they should still
> digipeat general traffic in their range, and no one will know who is
> doing it (unless those digis add a trace entry of themselves to the
> path).
>
> So what would be the point? One digi beacon every 30 minutes wouldn't
> clog the channel. And, unless those digis explicitly didn't support
> standard aliases (WIDEn-N or the obsolete RELAY and WIDE), they would
> still digi general traffic (not just the owner's traffic).
>
> Just can't figure out why someone would want a stealth digi.
>
> Andrew, KA2DDO
>

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