[FADCA] Fwd: Fw: [aprssig] Re: APRS broken

Sun, 21 Apr 2002 12:54:18 -0400

I will join the list soon Bill.

Funny you should mention this since we were talking about this about a week
ago on the APRS sig. Maybe someone brought it over here after seeing it. The
guys to South of me have envisioned the "Cellular Approach" for a long time
but it has been a mess given what we have now, EVERYONE is a WIDE! If we
move to a backbone then small frequent digi's along with a few central high
altitude WIDE's would be euphoria. Bob WB4APR brought this up on APRSIG
again not long ago, that is why I am CC'ing him.

Back in the early 90's (probably 92-94) I spoke with Tom quite a bit about
adding APRS capabilities to ROSE. Two features were added if my memory
serves me correctly, UI digipeating and a BTEXT fucntion so that
the stack's position could be beaconed out in a APRS format. I believe soon
after Tom had a child, moved out of the state and the ROSE code became a bit
dormant and the subject was dropped. I have never heard on the status of
ROSE code since then or if Tom W2VY is back in the game.

As far as Igates, I don't quite understand. You can have many people act as
Igates in one area and have it still work since a Igate should only RX on 2M
or HF and send to the internet. Never except in VERY special circumstances
should one go from the Internet to RF and in those cases just a few stations
would be ported. Sending everything out over RF will bring a 1200 baud
channel to a halt! The internet can handle dupes quite well and I would like
to see 2 Igates in every area eventually in case one crashes, the broadband
connection is lost, or if work is being done to one of the stations, the
other one will still do the feed. Some Igate programs allow the selective
porting of stations from the Internet to RF, others allow you to do all or
NONE. I do not believe the ALL feature should even be present, it can be
abused by well meaning people.

APRS does work over a TCP IP connection and that is how the Internet Gate
works using hubs. I am sure we can make our own INTRASTATE LAN with little
work. I am currently learning Linux which should make things very easy but I
don't know how long it will take me to get to speed. Just as I connect to
www.ahubeast.net for my feed from West Palm Beach to the Internet we can
possibly set up a www.ahubfl.net where all the FL regions will connect. In
this case since we are only talking FL traffic we would then ENABLE the
TCP/IP to RF feature. We would also need to limit connections to authorized
stations since we will all be set up to send IP to RF, one yahoo connecting
a hub feed to ours would lock up 144.39 or the UHF channel till' the watch
dog clocks out and lock it up.

Changing the APRS code will be very difficult at this point in time. You are
talking about what we call the APRSpec and their is a list devoted just to
this subject. APRS code has been around since 1990 and there are 7
widespread APRS programs in use now from every platform be it Palm OS to
Linux not to mention many other special and niche' programs. The changing of
the code I do not foresee happening, this has evolved way past that point
and would require a exhaustive amount of programming not just by one person
but possibly dozens! BUT what can happen is the ADDITION of code to the
program to support this, as with everything some will pick it up sooner than
others and we can't force it on the APRSpec but people can migrate over
eventually.

I was one of the first to envision the use of ROSE and APRS but without the
support and backing of enough people it died out. That was close to 10 years
ago when I went to meetings and demonstrated APRS to people who said "APR
what ?, why" (Sound familiar Bill?). I think we have finally evolved into a
majority now and the time may be right.If this progresses I would recommend
someone involved with the project to join the TAPR APRSpec mailing list. Be
forewarned, there is much controversy on the subject since some feel the
"spec" has not been followed and that it is a "click" in itself but that is
the place to bring changes like this up since all the authors of the various
APRS programs should be on that list.

OK, now I scrolled all the way to the bottom..Duhhh it was my message that
spurred this. The mailing list address is
[email protected]. You can subscribe to the list if you like from the Mailing
List Web page on TAPR.

Rich Garcia K4GPS
http://www.map.findu.com/k4pgs
Jupiter Farms Florida
http://www.jupiterfarmscert.org

-----Original Message-----
From: n4xeo [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, April 21, 2002 11:47 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FADCA] Fwd: Fw: [aprssig] Re: APRS broken

At 07:41 AM 4/21/2002 -0700, [email protected] wrote:

Hi All

I have also sent this to Rich so he can comment on it. Rich you might want
to join the fadca reflector to see all replies. If you need help let me
know.

>http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/fadca

We had Tom working on the FPAC code to allow the passage of aprs across the
fpac network (old rose). The work was stopped when we couldn't get the aprs
folks to change their code to allow for the use of routing across the
backbone. There has to be some kind of controlled access to the system so
there wouldn't be so much traffic that it slows down the network. My
thoughts would be to have the major cities or areas able to connect or
something like that to keep 10,000 packets just being repeated over and
over. The major hubs in a area can hear everything and they would be the
only ones that would need to make the connections in the area. Kind of like
the igates....You wouldn't want EVERYONE to run a Igate..

I haven't talked with anyone in a while about the fpac code, but the last I
remember was that the feature was added but not tested. This is where the
APR folks come in.

Rich,
If you can get some kind of code change to make it work over a network then
we can see how our code changes might or might not work.

Again from what I remember FADCA has welcomed this concept but there has
been NO talking about it...

I'll leave it here and see where this goes.

Bill N4XEO

>Bill Gutherie sent me this. Thanks, Bill.
>
>I was out of town and put off reading the note until I had a
>few minutes to digest what it was all about.  We have two
>UHF frequencies set aside for APRS networking in Florida. We
>also have a growing implemtation of FPAC and (finally) we
>are working on upgrading our network links to 9.6 in North
>East Florida between Jax and DAB.
>
>
>What do you think? I don't have the addresses of the Florida
>APRS group but we do have some of thier devices in the
>database.
>
>Some of their supporters have highspeed internet
>connections.  We need to combine resources and
>infrastructure, can we do it?
>
>Russ
>
>------- Start of forwarded message -------
>
>Subject: Fw: [aprssig] Re: APRS broken
>From: "Bill Guthrie" <[email protected]>
>Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 21:26:27 -0400
>To: "Russell Oder" <[email protected]>
>
>Hello:
>
>I picked this up off the APRS Email Sig. I thought it very
>interesting.
>
>Bill
>KC4OUA
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Rich Garcia" <[email protected]>
>To: "TAPR APRS Special Interest Group"
><[email protected]>
>Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 3:24 PM
>Subject: [aprssig] Re: APRS broken
>
>
> > This is something that I had brought up MANY years ago but
>was dropped. I
> > have long thought of APRS needing a backbone and even
>tried stirring
> > interest in the mid 90's for one reason, coverage. By
>using a backbone
> > system we could employ as has been mentioned beams, high
>power, and other
> > bands (heck even a old analog MW spur)to link WIDE digi's
>over long
> > distances.
> >
> > I spoke at great length with Tom Molton W2VY the author of
>ROSE about this
> > and some APRS code was actually written for ROSE switches
>(the BTEXT and
>UI
> > Digipeating capability)but soon after Tom moved, changed
>jobs and I think
> > dropped the ROSE project entirely. I am not sure who is
>responsible for
>the
> > code right now, I think it may be a club in Tampa.
> >
> > Yes it would be expensive to build a whole backbone
>network but not if we
> > would try to make use of ROSE nodes that are already out
>there and
>possibly
> > gathering dust. Regular packet has died quite a bit in
>some areas but not
> > all. A 144.39 port could be added at existing ROSE switch
>sites and use
>the
> > EXISTING backbone network. Florida had/has quite a bit of
>ROSE and some
>WIDE
> > sites also have ROSE already there, it is just a matter of
>the software.
> >
> > Last conversation with Tom W2VY was how we would do
>addressing to have the
> > APRS packet exit out the proper port at it's final
>location using the
> > current APRS protocol without modification. This was in
>93' or 94' maybe
>it
> > is time to look into this possibility again.
> >
> > In a topography like we have in FL where high for us is a
>1K foot tower
>and
> > population density is in pockets along the 2 coasts with
>little but swamp
> > and gators in-between we need long paths. Areas now split
>like Miami and
> > Orlando, or West Palm and Tampa can usually only converse
>via the Igate or
>a
> > band opening. A backbone could possibly resolve this issue.
> >
> > Rich K4GPS
> > [email protected]
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [email protected]
> > [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
>Guy Story,
> > KC5GOI
> > Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 1:31 PM
> > To: TAPR APRS Special Interest Group
> > Subject: [aprssig] Re: APRS broken
> >
> >
> > I am seeing simular issues in the DFW area with channel
>saturation.  A
> > backbone idea has been crawling about the back of my mind
>too.  TexNet
>does
> > a
> > very simular thing, so does ROSE.  The cost to build a
>backbone will not
>be
> > trivial though.
> >
> > Why has this issue popped up?  IMHO several reasons.  1)
>Improper useage
>of
> > unproto paths is still serious. 2) Beacon rates too often
>for fixed
>stations
> > and mobile stations not moving.  3) txdelay to long is
>sometimes an issue.
> > 4)
> > generic digipeat paths on WIDES and RELAYS.  I have seen
>many a digi with
> > WIDE4-4 instead of specific paths.  5) KPC3 ver 8.2 does
>have a bug that
> > does
> > not always prevent the duplicate packets (this is not as
>severe).
> >
> > There may be other reasons I am missing, but things are
>getting very
>crowded
> > in some areas.
> >
> > 73
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wednesday 17 April 2002 11:25 am, Alan Heaberlin wrote:
> > > > Subject: APRS High-Site BACKBONES
> > > > From: Bob Bruninga <[email protected]>
> > > > Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 20:31:40 -0400 (EDT)
> > > > X-Message-Number: 42
> > > >
> > > > APRS is completely broken in many high populatrion
>areas.  We must
>move
> > > > on past the "single-high-site-digi" 1995 APRS concept.
>  I posted this
> > > > before, but here it is again.  I also put this on a
>WEB page:
> > > >
> > > > http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/backbone.txt
> > > >
> > > > BACKBONE DIGIS
> > WB4APR
> >
> > ---
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> >
> >
> >
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>
>------- End of forwarded message -------
>
>
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73, Bill N4XEO

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