Re: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance)
On Thu, 14 May 2009 14:18:26 -0700, John Hays j...@hays.org said: Here is my thought on this. Radios should be identified by their official callsign (and optional designator character), tactical / special event callsigns can be put into the 4 char comment, on voice, or in the message field for SMS. Certainly, the local repeater could be allowed to pass tactical radio callsigns, but across the network you are just asking for routing errors if more than one station decides their callsign of the day is TAC1 or BASE or EOC (mitigated by registration, but then only one station in the entire network can be TAC1, in a dynamic addressed network it would be anarchy). It hasn't been anarchy yet... I disagree. Yes, you have to watch out that you aren't using some tacticals that someone else is using on the same day. How often has that happened in the real world yet? :-) The filter would have to be pretty loose but keep it to looking something like a callsign and definitely could filter certain profane words. Ohh.. now you've opened Pandora's box. Is it the Network's responsibility to stop someone from transmitting naughty words in their callsign field? :-) On both of the above ... I say no filters. Transmissions are the responsibility of the transmitting station... as always. Software in charge of human policy always ends up a mess, and people figure out ways around it anyway. Nate WY0X -- Nate Duehr n...@natetech.com
Re: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance)
On Thu, 14 May 2009 21:31:17 -, john_ke5c k...@hot.rr.com said: I don't like the idea of filtering bogus callsigns. What might be bogus to you, might be my special event's tactical callsigns. (There's nothing stopping anyone from registering SAG1, SAG1, NET, EVENT, etc.) I don't care if this is politically incorrect or insensitive, but if you want tactical this, that and the other, just join your local police force or the marines. You can probably even get tactical underwear there. If you want to operate on the amateur bands and modes, use an amateur callsign. 10-4? LOL! With this I actually totally agree with you John. People with lightbars on their vehicles without real Public Safety credentials make me cringe. The reason for Tactical callsigns in D-STAR SPECIFICALLY is if you have a bunch of radios already programmed with CALLSIGN SQUELCH. And it's only a hypothetical anyway... Most of this callsign routing, callsign squelch, etc... is WAY beyond the mental capabilities of a WHOLE lot of people in the volunteer pool of operators. I was just saying: I don't want the Gateway filtering things... the operators need to step up and learn something to use this system. It's more complex than mash to mumble and the more the infrastructure tries to make it simpler, the more complex it actually becomes. Case in point: D-Plus linking is great, but it wasn't implemented in a way to avoid the problems associated with mixing it with callsign routing. I callsign route to a repeater that's involved in a D-Plus link and (in my opinion) bad things happen. A sure sign that an attempt to make an already-working system easier, actually makes it harder in the corner-cases, but easier in the general sense. Not trying to embarass anyone, but here's another example: I had an e-mail today from one of our local leadership people saying, Please keep Port B clear for an event tomorrow. Okay, well.. let me explain here... in a callsign-routed always on network, there's no keeping it clear unless you want me to kill off D-Plus and the Gateway for ALL of the modules... your Net Controller instead NEEDS to know how to reply to a link made inbound from somewhere else and politely disconnect it, or respond to an interloping Dongle user, or how to hit the one-touch and reply to a callsign-routed CQ and explain there's a Net going on. The network is ALWAYS on in D-STAR... unless you're directing me to shut down the Gateway... was my reply... If we start adding filters, sure then a sysadmin could authorize only the callsigns that are involved in the event, but that puts an unnecessary burden on the system admin or delegates that can more adequately be handled by the conscious decision to teach the Net Control and other stations HOW the system works... That's my opinion anyway... Power to the people so to speak. LOL! Nate WY0X -- Nate Duehr n...@natetech.com
Re: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance)
On Thu, 14 May 2009 14:33:22 -0700, John Hays j...@hays.org said: I don't the reason for it, but I suspect that it was to support DD callsign to IP mapping and was just carried over to DV. Which is silly anyway, since the DD format is Ethernet encapsulation, not IP encapsulation. What if I wanted to run XNS (Xerox Networking Service) or Novell's IPX over D-STAR, its Ethernet but not IP. Has anyone actually tried that? I could brush up on my Novell skills from 1992. Never saw a more stable fileserver in my entire IT/telco professional career as a Novell 3.11 server. :-) Nate WY0X -- Nate Duehr n...@natetech.com
880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance)
--- In dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com, Nate Duehr n...@... wrote: On Thu, 14 May 2009 14:18:26 -0700, John Hays j...@... said: Here is my thought on this. Radios should be identified by their official callsign (and optional designator character), tactical / special event callsigns can be put into the 4 char comment, on voice, or in the message field for SMS. Certainly, the local repeater could be allowed to pass tactical radio callsigns, but across the network you are just asking for routing errors if more than one station decides their callsign of the day is TAC1 or BASE or EOC (mitigated by registration, but then only one station in the entire network can be TAC1, in a dynamic addressed network it would be anarchy). It hasn't been anarchy yet... I disagree. Yes, you have to watch out that you aren't using some tacticals that someone else is using on the same day. How often has that happened in the real world yet? :-) I think in the real world you would find that quite often a tactical callsign is in use in multiple locations. (For example, during a hurricane in the Gulf coast, multiple EOC stations may be on D-STAR at the same time.) In the dynamic design, you really don't have a database of who's using what callsign (though such a design would probably have query tools) I see this design being very dynamic with routing lookups on demand with caching. So the local gateway sees your local special callsign and marks it as being on local repeater X and reports to the central data servers, that EOC is now on repeater X (based on the MY EOC field). The gateway also services another repeater Y and someone now calls UR EOC and it routes to repeater X, good so far. Now another station on a remote gateway, servicing repeater Z, has MY EOC set and keys her microphone. The remote gateway dutifully updates the central data servers that EOC is now on repeater Z and sends an advisory notice to your local gateway of this information. Your local gateway says, oh, EOC has moved, I'll update my hashtable, now the station at repeater X keys with UR EOC and the gateway dutifully routes it to remote repeater Z ... ooops! As I said before, the radio should ID its official callsign ... solving this problem. Certainly, my aforementioned alternatives would allow net or event participants to still use tactical callsigns, an accepted practice in emergency communications. The use of tactical callsigns does not relieve a station of the responsibility of identifying his transmissions with his own callsign, so using the official station callsign in the MY field also frees the operator from having to remember to ID when in the heat of action during an event. The filter would have to be pretty loose but keep it to looking something like a callsign and definitely could filter certain profane words. Ohh.. now you've opened Pandora's box. Is it the Network's responsibility to stop someone from transmitting naughty words in their callsign field? :-) As a repeater trustee, one would have the responsibility to follow rule (in the US) 97.113a4, if she is aware of such transmissions. On both of the above ... I say no filters. Transmissions are the responsibility of the transmitting station... as always. Software in charge of human policy always ends up a mess, and people figure out ways around it anyway. Nate WY0X I would say the filters should be available at the gateway so that a trustee can have some management of its use, but they should be optional. -- John, K7VE
RE: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance)
John, I like your idea of using the four digit call sign note for tactical calls during operations. It makes perfect use of the stations call sign while providing a tactical or special event ID. That would work very well on events when you want to ID Resources as well as who the operators are leaving little or no confusion. You also provide a legal respectable call route when going through the internet gateways and transmitting on remote repeaters where the local repeater operator/trustee may not share such a loose interpretation of the rules such as use of anything goes for the digital call sign field (MYCALL). Digression I often feel like some operators would rather turn amateur radio into Citizens Band (CB) where anything goes as long as you don't get caught. Since we already allow Spanish speaking only repeaters on the air, why not port channel 19 CB and Itinerate radios onto our local amateur airwaves too so we can be one big happy deregulated family local and abroad. I like listening to the lot lizards at the local truck stops occasionally. It's so much fun to listen to them scurry about when law enforcement comes on scene. Almost as much fun as shooting ground hogs with a .308 and a night vision scope! Whatever happened to the good old days when kids could get dynamite at the local COOP store to go blow out stumps. For a bigger bang add a bag of sodium nitrate fertilizer. Fun times! We don't need to regulate common sense any more today than we did 40 years ago. Do We! From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digi...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of k7ve Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 12:49 PM To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Subject: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance) --- In dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com mailto:dstar_digital%40yahoogroups.com , Nate Duehr n...@... wrote: On Thu, 14 May 2009 14:18:26 -0700, John Hays j...@... said: Here is my thought on this. Radios should be identified by their official callsign (and optional designator character), tactical / special event callsigns can be put into the 4 char comment, on voice, or in the message field for SMS. Certainly, the local repeater could be allowed to pass tactical radio callsigns, but across the network you are just asking for routing errors if more than one station decides their callsign of the day is TAC1 or BASE or EOC (mitigated by registration, but then only one station in the entire network can be TAC1, in a dynamic addressed network it would be anarchy). It hasn't been anarchy yet... I disagree. Yes, you have to watch out that you aren't using some tacticals that someone else is using on the same day. How often has that happened in the real world yet? :-) I think in the real world you would find that quite often a tactical callsign is in use in multiple locations. (For example, during a hurricane in the Gulf coast, multiple EOC stations may be on D-STAR at the same time.) In the dynamic design, you really don't have a database of who's using what callsign (though such a design would probably have query tools) I see this design being very dynamic with routing lookups on demand with caching. So the local gateway sees your local special callsign and marks it as being on local repeater X and reports to the central data servers, that EOC is now on repeater X (based on the MY EOC field). The gateway also services another repeater Y and someone now calls UR EOC and it routes to repeater X, good so far. Now another station on a remote gateway, servicing repeater Z, has MY EOC set and keys her microphone. The remote gateway dutifully updates the central data servers that EOC is now on repeater Z and sends an advisory notice to your local gateway of this information. Your local gateway says, oh, EOC has moved, I'll update my hashtable, now the station at repeater X keys with UR EOC and the gateway dutifully routes it to remote repeater Z ... ooops! As I said before, the radio should ID its official callsign ... solving this problem. Certainly, my aforementioned alternatives would allow net or event participants to still use tactical callsigns, an accepted practice in emergency communications. The use of tactical callsigns does not relieve a station of the responsibility of identifying his transmissions with his own callsign, so using the official station callsign in the MY field also frees the operator from having to remember to ID when in the heat of action during an event. The filter would have to be pretty loose but keep it to looking something like a callsign and definitely could filter certain profane words. Ohh.. now you've opened Pandora's box. Is it the Network's responsibility to stop someone from transmitting naughty words in their callsign field? :-) As a repeater trustee, one would have the responsibility to follow rule (in the US) 97.113a4, if she is aware of such transmissions. On both of the above ... I
RE: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance)
Easy solution, stop callsign routing. Use repeater linking instead. Problem solved. Ed WA4YIH From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digi...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Nate Duehr Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 2:29 PM To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance) Case in point: D-Plus linking is great, but it wasn't implemented in a way to avoid the problems associated with mixing it with callsign routing. I callsign route to a repeater that's involved in a D-Plus link and (in my opinion) bad things happen. A sure sign that an attempt to make an already-working system easier, actually makes it harder in the corner-cases, but easier in the general sense. Not trying to embarass anyone, but here's another example: I had an e-mail today from one of our local leadership people saying, Please keep Port B clear for an event tomorrow. Okay, well.. let me explain here... in a callsign-routed always on network, there's no keeping it clear unless you want me to kill off D-Plus and the Gateway for ALL of the modules... your Net Controller instead NEEDS to know how to reply to a link made inbound from somewhere else and politely disconnect it, or respond to an interloping Dongle user, or how to hit the one-touch and reply to a callsign-routed CQ and explain there's a Net going on. The network is ALWAYS on in D-STAR... unless you're directing me to shut down the Gateway... was my reply... That's my opinion anyway... Power to the people so to speak. LOL! Nate WY0X -- Nate Duehr n...@natetech.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
RE: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance)
Agreed, callsigns should be the real callsign. Even in AX.25 packet, the callsign was the callsign. An alias field was added to support tactical calls. If you use MYEOC as a tactical call, then unless it is registered, it can't source route or link repeaters. And from an EOC, that's something that you might want to do. You also have to think that we John was alluding to, D-STAR is a much wider impact communications medium than a VHF/UHF Packet or voice system. You don't see much use of tactical callsigns on HF because it too has a wide impacting implication. And don't forget that many county names are used multiple times across the US, so collisions can definitely be a problem and one county registering their tactical call before another wouldn't be really fair. Maybe the more appropriate action would be to get callsigns for the EOCs. Many might already have a RACES call, but you can get additional callsigns for your organization to act as your tactical callsigns. Ed WA4YIH From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digi...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of k7ve Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 2:49 PM To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Subject: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance) I think in the real world you would find that quite often a tactical callsign is in use in multiple locations. (For example, during a hurricane in the Gulf coast, multiple EOC stations may be on D-STAR at the same time.) In the dynamic design, you really don't have a database of who's using what callsign (though such a design would probably have query tools) I see this design being very dynamic with routing lookups on demand with caching. So the local gateway sees your local special callsign and marks it as being on local repeater X and reports to the central data servers, that EOC is now on repeater X (based on the MY EOC field). The gateway also services another repeater Y and someone now calls UR EOC and it routes to repeater X, good so far. Now another station on a remote gateway, servicing repeater Z, has MY EOC set and keys her microphone. The remote gateway dutifully updates the central data servers that EOC is now on repeater Z and sends an advisory notice to your local gateway of this information. Your local gateway says, oh, EOC has moved, I'll update my hashtable, now the station at repeater X keys with UR EOC and the gateway dutifully routes it to remote repeater Z ... ooops! As I said before, the radio should ID its official callsign ... solving this problem. Certainly, my aforementioned alternatives would allow net or event participants to still use tactical callsigns, an accepted practice in emergency communications. The use of tactical callsigns does not relieve a station of the responsibility of identifying his transmissions with his own callsign, so using the official station callsign in the MY field also frees the operator from having to remember to ID when in the heat of action during an event. As a repeater trustee, one would have the responsibility to follow rule (in the US) 97.113a4, if she is aware of such transmissions. I would say the filters should be available at the gateway so that a trustee can have some management of its use, but they should be optional. -- John, K7VE [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Re: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance)
They each have their purpose, we just need better gateway software. -- John D. Hays 206-801-0820 Sent from my iPhone On May 15, 2009, at 20:28, Woodrick, Ed ewoodr...@ed-com.com wrote: Easy solution, stop callsign routing. Use repeater linking instead. Problem solved. Ed WA4YIH From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com ] On Behalf Of Nate Duehr Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 2:29 PM To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance) Case in point: D-Plus linking is great, but it wasn't implemented in a way to avoid the problems associated with mixing it with callsign routing. I callsign route to a repeater that's involved in a D-Plus link and (in my opinion) bad things happen. A sure sign that an attempt to make an already-working system easier, actually makes it harder in the corner-cases, but easier in the general sense. Not trying to embarass anyone, but here's another example: I had an e-mail today from one of our local leadership people saying, Please keep Port B clear for an event tomorrow. Okay, well.. let me explain here... in a callsign-routed always on network, there's no keeping it clear unless you want me to kill off D-Plus and the Gateway for ALL of the modules... your Net Controller instead NEEDS to know how to reply to a link made inbound from somewhere else and politely disconnect it, or respond to an interloping Dongle user, or how to hit the one-touch and reply to a callsign-routed CQ and explain there's a Net going on. The network is ALWAYS on in D-STAR... unless you're directing me to shut down the Gateway... was my reply... That's my opinion anyway... Power to the people so to speak. LOL! Nate WY0X -- Nate Duehr n...@natetech.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
