Good Evening one and ALL, First of all, Happy Holidays to ALL.
This email is being sent as a part of Jim McClellan email, and with his permission, I openly attribute this to Jim's. First order is the State of Our Network. With issues still within the network, Jim's email will explain what some of the concerns are for ALL of the DSTAR NETWORK. The network is still alive and strong. The Conference Servers and the supports to them, Alive and Strong. There are KNOWN issues with NON-G2 TYPE systems that have injected bad things into the network, however, with self monitoring, some of these issues have been resolved, not fully, but they have been tended to. Second: Network Statistics; Registered Users: 11909 (max recorded) Registered Terminals: 13641 (max recorded) Registered Gateways: 529 (max recorded) Source: http://stats.kj4byi.org/ Secondary Source: http://dstarusers.org/dsm_growth.html Now with that stated, I will now conclude with Jim's email to all members. Again, Happy Holidays to all, Please continue supporting your Local Gateways Systems, and the DSTAR hobby. Looking forward to talking to some of you tonight on the South-Eastern Dstar Weather Net on REF002A @ 9pm Evans F. Mitchell KD4EFM / WQFK-894 Fla. D-Star Tech Support Group http://www.florida-dstar.info Polk ARES A.E.C. http://www.polkemcomm.org -----Original Message----- From: Jim McClellan (N5MIJ) Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 4:36 PM To: 'Evans F. Mitchell KD4EFM' Subject: RE: What is the State of the Union for the REAL, US ROOT???? Evans, OK, here's the synopsis. Feel free to disseminate & attribute to me. The Trust Server Admin team is working hard trying to keep everything running. We have at least 5 different versions of Gateway software on the network now. Only one of the non-ICOM versions bothered to test with us. Without better control of the Gateway & Trust Server code, there is no way to control the network at this point. The idea of the International Coordination Council collapsed when ICOM Home Company refused to support it if they didn't have complete control. With the loss of the ICC, we have no authoritative source willing to publish accurate specifications. So things definitely didn't go like we'd hoped. At this point, there is no way to avoid major problems with the D-STAR network. We have people putting up an ICOM Gateway to gain approval at the Trust Server, then switching to one of the other Gateways. We have no way to control this. We gained our initial way through our problems with lots of cooperation from ICOM and the Gateway administrators. At this point, I no longer see either group trying to cooperate with anyone. The folks at ICOM America understood what was needed and supported our efforts. ICOM Home Company was where we lost support. It is my belief that we'll now go through a period of chaos, which will unavoidably hurt both the technology and the sales of D-STAR. When we find someone willing and technically competent to publish valid specifications, we'll again coalesce and move forward. We won't see any more major steps until that happens. Unfortunately, I believe that whoever chooses to attempt that effort will be required to work with the JARL, and won't get the support of ICOM. This disappoints me, because D-STAR has such tremendous potential for us all. It will come, but it will take much longer to get here than we'd hoped. In the meantime, enjoy the hobby and don't let anyone take the fun out for you! 73, Jim N5MIJ
