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Greetings to the "how it works" group.<BR>
<BR>
I notice a couple things while watching jnos do it's thing...<BR>
I offer what follows as a couple questions that might have obvious answers if I had been around longer than my year with nos.<BR>
<BR>
Today at my k8rra node:<BR>
I show BBS=2 k8rra and wa8rsa signed in and idle on the console header and similar for the BBS "mbox" command.<BR>
At the same time "ax25 status" shows no active sessions (k8rra is a telnet login) - wa8rsa is a netrom login.<BR>
At the same time "netrom status" shows wa8rsa "connected" with Snd-W=3 Snd-Q=0 Rcv-Q=0.<BR>
Now this shows unfinished business with wa8rsa here at my node.<BR>
A number of circumstances may have led to this situation, but is is proper for my node to be passive?<BR>
Have I got a configuration problem to fix?<BR>
Should I see my node later attempt to re-connect and pass on the SND-W=3 packets (top-down) or has wa8rsa had disconnect message showing he should reconnect to get missing information (bottom-up)?<BR>
<BR>
Consistently day to day:<BR>
I see TCP/IP traffic on the RF link to wa8rsa, it does not matter what the traffic content is.<BR>
My trace does show an ARP to establish a AX.25 link from k8rra to wa8rsa, and TCP/IP content encapsulated into valid AX.25 packets.<BR>
While this is active my console "ax25 status" command does not list wa8rsa as any status as all.<BR>
My read of everything technical says to me that it is proper to consider IP encapsulated into AX.25 for this traffic.<BR>
My read of this reflector is more ambiguous - some hint encapsulation, some hint separate.<BR>
If encapsulation is correct, then I suggest that the status command should show the wa8rsa-k8rra link established.<BR>
It might be useful to designate the ax is driven by IP (or also netrom?), but is it accurate to find it missing?<BR>
<BR>
Tying the two observations together:<BR>
I see a relationship between NET/ROM and AX.25 where net/rom "rides on top of" ax.25 to carry content.<BR>
I see less relationship between TCP/IP and AX.25 until I look at the packet traces, then pid=IP is similar to pid=netrom.<BR>
So why do we treat these two forms of traffic on AX differently?<BR>
<BR>
One more loosely related subject:<BR>
Without doing an audit to compute statistics, my intuitive read on nos-bbs subject matter suggests application examples resolve many questions.
<UL>
<LI>This is easily true for newbies. To have a "go-by" example to pick from a list and tweek into their own needs might speed deployment?
<LI>Displayed by feature maybe. To have a net/rom specific example with ax.25 prerequisite settings would speed troubleshooting?
<LI>Inclusive of related files. To have sample popuser file with user example commands speeds both configuration and education?
</UL>
My question becomes: If there are shining examples of this concept of "an example is worth 1000 words?", where might they be?<BR>
Is there support for the idea that more examples of successful installs would benefit our community even more than command detail?<BR>
I'm 1/2 tempted to boil down nos-bbs reflector threads into FAQ examples for publication...<BR>
<BR>
The above may go outside the box but seems (to me) relevant to building a broader user base for jnos.<BR>
Have I suggested that nos needs a little de-geeking? I do hope no offense is taken.<BR>
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