On Aug 10, 2010, at 12:56 PM, Tony Langdon wrote:
At 04:39 AM 8/11/2010, you wrote:
Callsign routing probably would have gained traction earlier if the
updates to gateways weren't so slow, but ircddb has solved this
problem if gateway owners will just install it.
ircddb is certainly a huge improvement that makes callsign routing
much more useful. However, I beg to differ as to how much traction
it would gin in the long run. I see that callsign routing often
suits a different scenario to what most hams actually do.
Callsign routing is at its best in a one on one scenario, especially
when you're looking for a specific station (and even more so if
ircddb is in use). However, many hams use wide area repeater
networks for nets and ragchewing. For these applications, callsign
routing is usually inferior to DPlus reflectors.
Normal callsign routing doesn't really accommodate (say) a net
involving 3 or more gateways (where do you direct UR to so that
everyone can hear you? Sure, there is the multicast feature, which
is designed to do this, but this has two serious limitations in my
book:
1. It requires administrator intervention on all participating
gateways to setup. This is the big show stopper in my book, it
lacks flexibility. Doable here in Australia, where the WIA runs
most of the gateways, but bugging administrators in this way is not
what most end users want to do, just to run a net, especially when
it's a simple matter to link to a reflector (and for courtesy, ask
ONE person, rather than several if they can hold their net there).
2. It puts demand on the upstream bandwidth of gateways. In most
installations, this is the biggest bandwidth limitation, and not all
gateways will comfortable support the upstream data rate (obviously
those running DD ports _should_ be OK, unless running heavy DD
activity at the same time). DPlus reflectors are generally
installed in data centres with good bandwidth available.
Wide area linking has its place and I'm grateful that Robin added it
to the toolbox. However, it also has its downside:
Links tend to be up for long periods of time, and local users are
either unaware or don't consider the fact. I don't know how many
times I've listened to local conversations between two hams 800 miles
away, that have no interest to anyone but the two hams involved. I've
even heard (for several hours) a US ham and a VK ham using reflector
connected gateways as a personal intercom as they were working HF.
(Not that having an "Intercom" running is an inappropriate activity,
but it would be better to only involve the two repeaters and not the
entire collection of gateways on the rather widely used reflector.)
I've also noted in some of these situations that the operators don't
leave gaps for others to get on their local repeaters or join the
conversation ... sometimes delaying the ability to gracefully leave
the reflector.
A net I participate in meets weekly and at least 3 repeaters
automatically connect to the reflector for the network, but sometimes
there are no net participants on those repeaters. Aside from just
listening for pleasure, it may prevent people who aren't familiar with
(or worse yet are restricted) linking from disconnecting.
One on one is a natural for callsign routing, especially if one of the
participants doesn't know the location of the other. However, it
would be possible to create network server software that used callsign
routing rather than linking and would be much more flexible. How it
would work is for everyone participating in the network would put the
network "pseudo-callsign" in the URCALL field. The gateways would
direct transmissions to the "pseudo-callsign" which is really a daemon
running on a server on the D-STAR network, which would note the
stations checking in and what gateways they were on. Every
transmission to the "pseudo-callsign" would be repeated to all
gateways with network members present. If a station moved from one
repeater/gateway to another and keyed up, the network would add the
new repeater/gateway to the list and repeat to it as well. Very
dynamic, no "linking/unlinking" of gateways, it just uses the
underlying native callsign routing.
John D. Hays
Amateur Radio Station K7VE
PO Box 1223
Edmonds, WA 98020-1223 VOIP/SIP: [email protected]
