Re: [Xastir] path question
I wanted to thank everyone for contribs to this question. The idea of putting tnc on the air wasn't much help, but by gosh, the aprs Monday night check-ins are growing and it's fun to see which came in via inet help and which ones made it via RF. 73 j On 08/27/2018 06:13 PM, MJ Inabnit wrote: > > I have xastir running via internet connect, however, I would like to > figure out a path so it would push packets to my Igate with a wide path > of 2-2 to make it over the mountain. Is there a way to do that? > > tu, 73 > > j > -- wishing you well Jaye, ke6sls--via the toshiba w/thunderchicken ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
> On Sep 1, 2018, at 3:03 AM, Liz wrote: > > The use of "mountaintops" isn't really accurate - I live on the largest > flattest plain on planet Earth, and even without mountaintops we share > our APRS signals! It’s just a label used because a) it’s the example used to describe the concept and b) we have mountains available for use. Of course it’s exactly the same for a tall tower instead of mountaintop and short tower for a home/fill-in. I’m not convinced the concept of a special configuration for a “fill-in” is valid (or at least it is not needed) if the other parts of the network are working correctly (duplicate suppression, repeated packet fratracide, etc). Just configure as WIDEn-N and go. Oops, that was an APRS sig comment. :/ -Jason kg4wsv ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
On Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:34:51 -0700 (PDT) "Curt, WE7U" wrote: > > Thank you very much, and especially for relating it to IP, since > > I'm a lot more comfortable with that. > > > > So how does the path work when you use it in the Igate -> RF Path > > section of the TNC interface config in Xastir? > > > > Mine is set up as WIDE2-1. What effect would changing that to > > WIDE2-2 have? > > Would change to two hops via mountaintops only for igate traffic > heading from your system to RF. > > Right now you're going out one hop via mountaintops. The use of "mountaintops" isn't really accurate - I live on the largest flattest plain on planet Earth, and even without mountaintops we share our APRS signals! Locally we think of them as wide area digipeaters as opposed to local digipeaters. The WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2 type of transmit and digipeat instruction doesn't worry whether your digipeaters are in high spots or a low spots, it just decrements with each transmission. And if you think that low altitude 2m digipeaters don't give long distance, the longest distance I have noted for an incoming packet came from Albany, Western Australia through 3 hops to my iGate in the NSW Riverina. 2018-03-11 17:40:47.239 VK2XSE-1 R VK6RAL-3>APN383,VK5RAC-1*,VK5RSE-1*,WIDE2*:!3501.46S/11753.67E#PHG5530/ SEG - www.hamradio.org.au That was about 2,700km Liz VK2XSE ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
Hello Tom, Check out K8DCI's APRS Beginner Guide. It's a little older but it's a good document! http://www.trinityos.com/HAM/Aprs/APRS%20Beginner%20Guide%20-%20K9DCI%20Ver%205-1.pdf --David KI6ZHD On 08/30/2018 05:36 AM, Tom Henderson wrote: Is there a good explanation of paths and how they work in APRS someone could refer me to? I see bits and pieces out there, but nothing comprehensive tat explains it from the ground up. Tom Henderson ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
> On Aug 30, 2018, at 3:40 PM, Curt, WE7U wrote: > >> On Thu, 30 Aug 2018, mlhpub wrote: >> >> Thanks for this interesting explanation with the origin of WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 >> (usefull with old APRS materials). > > Yea, he did a good job. > > Jason: Take a look at the latest page and clean up anything that is > technically wrong or that I messed up while formatting/editing. Thanks Curt. Your improvements help a lot. I don't think I have wiki access, but I don't see anything that needs changing. Thanks! -j ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
On Thu, 30 Aug 2018, mlhpub wrote: Thanks for this interesting explanation with the origin of WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 (usefull with old APRS materials). Yea, he did a good job. Jason: Take a look at the latest page and clean up anything that is technically wrong or that I messed up while formatting/editing. Feel free to send changes to me if you don't have Wiki write access. I don't remember who does/doesn't have it. http://xastir.org/index.php/HowTo:PATHS -- Curt, WE7U.http://we7u.wetnet.net "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking Coordinate Converter (Android): http://www.sarguydigital.com ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
Thanks for this interesting explanation with the origin of WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 (usefull with old APRS materials). 73 de F4ACU Matthieu Message d'origine De : "Curt, WE7U" Date : 30/08/2018 18:42 (GMT+01:00) À : Xastir - APRS client software discussion Objet : Re: [Xastir] path question On Thu, 30 Aug 2018, Jason KG4WSV wrote: > On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 9:55 AM Curt, WE7U wrote: >> >> Can I turn all of your message into a Wiki page on Xastir.org? Would be cool >> to point people at the link. Might help quite a few over the coming years. > > Sure. Feel free to make the first wiki update as you go and fix my > typos, like there's an "nd" instead of "and" and WIDE should have been > WIDE1-1 (or RELAY, not sure what I was thinking). First cut. Feel free to edit. I changed a couple of "WIDE" entries, added "RELAY", added the historical note. Still needs to be "prettied-up" with headings and the like but the basic info is there: https://xastir.org/index.php/HowTo:PATHS -- Curt, WE7U. http://we7u.wetnet.net APRS Usage Pages: http://we7u.wetnet.net/usage.html Coordinate Converter (Android): http://www.sarguydigital.com ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
On Thu, 30 Aug 2018, Jason KG4WSV wrote: On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 9:55 AM Curt, WE7U wrote: Can I turn all of your message into a Wiki page on Xastir.org? Would be cool to point people at the link. Might help quite a few over the coming years. Sure. Feel free to make the first wiki update as you go and fix my typos, like there's an "nd" instead of "and" and WIDE should have been WIDE1-1 (or RELAY, not sure what I was thinking). First cut. Feel free to edit. I changed a couple of "WIDE" entries, added "RELAY", added the historical note. Still needs to be "prettied-up" with headings and the like but the basic info is there: https://xastir.org/index.php/HowTo:PATHS -- Curt, WE7U.http://we7u.wetnet.net APRS Usage Pages: http://we7u.wetnet.net/usage.html Coordinate Converter (Android): http://www.sarguydigital.com ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
Thank you very much, and especially for relating it to IP, since I'm a
lot more comfortable with that.
So how does the path work when you use it in the Igate -> RF Path
section of the TNC interface config in Xastir?
Mine is set up as WIDE2-1. What effect would changing that to WIDE2-2 have?
Tom Henderson
On 08/30/2018 09:42 AM, Jason KG4WSV wrote:
On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 7:36 AM Tom Henderson wrote:
Is there a good explanation of paths and how they work in APRS someone
could refer me to? I see bits and pieces out there, but nothing
comprehensive tat explains it from the ground up.
I don't know of one off the top of my head.
An AX.25 path is called "source routing" in general networking
terminology. This is because the path that the packet will travel
through the network is determined by the source of the packet. E.g.
If I know routers Bob and Sally get me to Jim, my destination address
would be Jim with a path of Bob,Sally. In more typical routing
scenarios (e.g. Internet Protocol aka IP) the source node only knows
how to get to the first router in the path (almost always your
"default gateway"), nd that node knows how to get the next step toward
the destination.
IP includes a field called TTL (time to live) which is really a hop
count, not a time. The source of the packet sets the maximum number
of routers to be traversed ("hops") and each router decrements the TTL
by 1. If the TTL drops to 0, the packet is discarded. AX.25 has no
such provision - it isn't needed, because the route length is fixed by
the path.
Another element of AX.25 addressing is the "SSID" secondary station
identifier. An AX.25 address is a callsign plus a 4 bit number (0 to
15) so that a single ham can have 16 stations on the network at the
same time. For a bit of added confusion, the SSID 0 is often left
off, so you'll see KG4WSV-3, but rarely KG4WSV-0; that'll be
abbreviated to KG4WSV. (On a side note "CALL-N" is just a convention
for representing what is actually a fixed width binary address; every
AX.25 address takes up exactly the same number of bits when it's going
over the air.)
In an AX.25 packet, the source address, destination address, and 0 to
8 path addresses are all standard AX.25 addresses.
In order to accomplish a broadcast address (which doesn't exist in
AX.25 AFAIK), the address "WIDE" was used. AX.25 repeaters were
configured to answer to an alias of WIDE (in addition to their
callsign). This allows a packet to travel in multiple directions
(network-wise), and it allows a generic PATH to work everywhere, which
is critical to making the network useful in a mobile environment.
The WIDEn-N concept used by APRS is a mashup. Instead of a fixed
address in the source path (e.g. "Bob" or Sally" or KG4WSV) it uses a
generic address of WIDEn-N, where "n" is the requested number of hops
(like the initial TTL in IP) and "N" is the number of hops remaining
(analogous to the current TTL in IP). note the "n" is purely
documentation; the functional part of the count is the "N", the part
of the address that's in those 4 bits representing the SSID. In
addition to WIDE, there are special uses, e.g. STn-N where ST is the 2
letter state abbreviation. Effectively the n-N method uses the 4 bits
of the SSID part of the address as a hop count.
An added twist is that there's a hop count for each of these generic
path elements and Ax.25 allows for multiple addresses in the path, so
a path of WIDE2-2.WIDE2-2 would give me a total of 4 hops.
There are additional historical artifacts, like the hack to allow
ancient crude hardware incapable of the WIDEn-N SSID decrement trick
to participate in the network as an edge repeater, where a packet
could enter the network if the transmitting station couldn't be heard
by a more capable n-N repeater. A path the looks like "WIDE,WIDE2-1"
is a result.
Many of the confusing aspects of APRS networking, IMO, are due to
hacks to support hardware that should be retired, e.g. the whole
"WIDE,WIDE2-1" thing.
Hope this helps a bit.
-Jason
kg4wsv
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Re: [Xastir] path question
On Thu, 30 Aug 2018, Jason KG4WSV wrote: An AX.25 path is called "source routing" in general networking terminology. Can I turn all of your message into a Wiki page on Xastir.org? Would be cool to point people at the link. Might help quite a few over the coming years. -- Curt, WE7U.http://we7u.wetnet.net APRS Client Capabilities: http://we7u.wetnet.net/aprs_capabilities.html Coordinate Converter (Android): http://www.sarguydigital.com ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 7:36 AM Tom Henderson wrote:
>
> Is there a good explanation of paths and how they work in APRS someone
> could refer me to? I see bits and pieces out there, but nothing
> comprehensive tat explains it from the ground up.
I don't know of one off the top of my head.
An AX.25 path is called "source routing" in general networking
terminology. This is because the path that the packet will travel
through the network is determined by the source of the packet. E.g.
If I know routers Bob and Sally get me to Jim, my destination address
would be Jim with a path of Bob,Sally. In more typical routing
scenarios (e.g. Internet Protocol aka IP) the source node only knows
how to get to the first router in the path (almost always your
"default gateway"), nd that node knows how to get the next step toward
the destination.
IP includes a field called TTL (time to live) which is really a hop
count, not a time. The source of the packet sets the maximum number
of routers to be traversed ("hops") and each router decrements the TTL
by 1. If the TTL drops to 0, the packet is discarded. AX.25 has no
such provision - it isn't needed, because the route length is fixed by
the path.
Another element of AX.25 addressing is the "SSID" secondary station
identifier. An AX.25 address is a callsign plus a 4 bit number (0 to
15) so that a single ham can have 16 stations on the network at the
same time. For a bit of added confusion, the SSID 0 is often left
off, so you'll see KG4WSV-3, but rarely KG4WSV-0; that'll be
abbreviated to KG4WSV. (On a side note "CALL-N" is just a convention
for representing what is actually a fixed width binary address; every
AX.25 address takes up exactly the same number of bits when it's going
over the air.)
In an AX.25 packet, the source address, destination address, and 0 to
8 path addresses are all standard AX.25 addresses.
In order to accomplish a broadcast address (which doesn't exist in
AX.25 AFAIK), the address "WIDE" was used. AX.25 repeaters were
configured to answer to an alias of WIDE (in addition to their
callsign). This allows a packet to travel in multiple directions
(network-wise), and it allows a generic PATH to work everywhere, which
is critical to making the network useful in a mobile environment.
The WIDEn-N concept used by APRS is a mashup. Instead of a fixed
address in the source path (e.g. "Bob" or Sally" or KG4WSV) it uses a
generic address of WIDEn-N, where "n" is the requested number of hops
(like the initial TTL in IP) and "N" is the number of hops remaining
(analogous to the current TTL in IP). note the "n" is purely
documentation; the functional part of the count is the "N", the part
of the address that's in those 4 bits representing the SSID. In
addition to WIDE, there are special uses, e.g. STn-N where ST is the 2
letter state abbreviation. Effectively the n-N method uses the 4 bits
of the SSID part of the address as a hop count.
An added twist is that there's a hop count for each of these generic
path elements and Ax.25 allows for multiple addresses in the path, so
a path of WIDE2-2.WIDE2-2 would give me a total of 4 hops.
There are additional historical artifacts, like the hack to allow
ancient crude hardware incapable of the WIDEn-N SSID decrement trick
to participate in the network as an edge repeater, where a packet
could enter the network if the transmitting station couldn't be heard
by a more capable n-N repeater. A path the looks like "WIDE,WIDE2-1"
is a result.
Many of the confusing aspects of APRS networking, IMO, are due to
hacks to support hardware that should be retired, e.g. the whole
"WIDE,WIDE2-1" thing.
Hope this helps a bit.
-Jason
kg4wsv
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Re: [Xastir] path question
On Thu, 30 Aug 2018, Tom Henderson wrote: Is there a good explanation of paths and how they work in APRS someone could refer me to? I see bits and pieces out there, but nothing comprehensive tat explains it from the ground up. How about this for a start? http://info.aprs.net/index.php?title=Paths For the most part you've got WIDE1-1 that signifies one hop in all directions from -either- a home digipeater -or- a mountaintop digi, and WIDEn-N higher than one, which will get you digipeated by only a mountaintop digi. Put them together for a mobile and you get: WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 For a base station perhaps WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2, or WIDE3-3. Gives you three hops in all directions using your neighbor and the mountaintops, or just the mountaintops, depending on how well you get out and whether you need that "assist" up to the mountaintops. I think around here (Western WA) a lot of people run WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 or just WIDE2-2 for home stations, as the coverage is pretty good and you don't usually need to go three hops. If you see anything online that talks about RELAY or WIDE (without the n-N portion) ignore it as it's many years too old. We haven't used those in decades. -- Curt, WE7U.http://we7u.wetnet.net Closed-minded about open (-source)... Coordinate Converter (Android): http://www.sarguydigital.com ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
Is there a good explanation of paths and how they work in APRS someone could refer me to? I see bits and pieces out there, but nothing comprehensive tat explains it from the ground up. Tom Henderson On 08/29/2018 08:54 PM, Curt, WE7U wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2018, MJ Inabnit wrote: I have an Igate running APRX and has my TNC connected to it. On Mondays, I run a short APRS check in net, so I fire up xastir to qsl each check-in. However, I would like to send a qst prior to the net to remind locals nearish to check in, hence my desire to ensure once I send out a qst, it will at least get routed through my Igate. In Xastir you set your outgoing RF path on the particular interface connected to the radio/TNC. I have also had issues when using xastir where local hams in range of my Igate didn't get the packets via the aprs servers which can be rather frustrating. Inet traffic to RF is typically messages, ack's, and nak's, -only- if the station they're heading to has been heard by that particular Igate within the last hour on RF. Anything else heading to RF from Inet would require additions to the nws-stations.txt file in Xastir. Note that it can be used for more than just sending weather alerts to RF. ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
On Tue, 28 Aug 2018, MJ Inabnit wrote: I have an Igate running APRX and has my TNC connected to it. On Mondays, I run a short APRS check in net, so I fire up xastir to qsl each check-in. However, I would like to send a qst prior to the net to remind locals nearish to check in, hence my desire to ensure once I send out a qst, it will at least get routed through my Igate. In Xastir you set your outgoing RF path on the particular interface connected to the radio/TNC. I have also had issues when using xastir where local hams in range of my Igate didn't get the packets via the aprs servers which can be rather frustrating. Inet traffic to RF is typically messages, ack's, and nak's, -only- if the station they're heading to has been heard by that particular Igate within the last hour on RF. Anything else heading to RF from Inet would require additions to the nws-stations.txt file in Xastir. Note that it can be used for more than just sending weather alerts to RF. -- Curt, WE7U.http://we7u.wetnet.net APRS in Search and Rescue: http://we7u.wetnet.net/search_and_rescue.html Coordinate Converter (Android): http://www.sarguydigital.com ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
> On Aug 29, 2018, at 4:44 PM, Bill Vodall wrote: > > Turn > off the iGate and give the radios a work out.. There are plenty of reasons to gate “-IS” type traffic to RF, like his wx local device that doesn’t speak APRS directly. This solution will allow him to contribute to CWOP and APRS-RF at the same time. I’ve personally had some traffic in APRS-IS format that needed to get to RF so I could converge non-ham capable data systems with ham traffic. -IS traffic is pretty easy to generate and feed to a server port with a simple script. If you’re already using xastir for your mapping APRS it makes a lot of sense to let it do the work of getting that data to RF too, if it can. Jason kg4wsv ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
Internet traffic (APRS-IS) does not go to RF unless you explicity force it to. Or if it's a message going to a station heard on the local iGATE. So your net on the Internet is not going to RF. Turn off the iGate and give the radios a work out.. On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 10:37 AM MJ Inabnit wrote: > > > Tnx, here's more details: > > I have an Igate running APRX and has my TNC connected to it. On > Mondays, I run a short APRS check in net, so I fire up xastir to qsl > each check-in. However, I would like to send a qst prior to the net to > remind locals nearish to check in, hence my desire to ensure once I send > out a qst, it will at least get routed through my Igate. > > I have also had issues when using xastir where > local hams in range of my Igate didn't get the packets via the aprs > servers which can be rather frustrating. > > does that help? > > tnx, 73 > j > > On 08/28/2018 07:32 AM, Curt, WE7U wrote: > > On Mon, 27 Aug 2018, MJ Inabnit wrote: > > > >> I have xastir running via internet connect, however, I would like to > >> figure out a path so it would push packets to my Igate with a wide path > >> of 2-2 to make it over the mountain. Is there a way to do that? > > > > Need more data. > > > > Is your igate a separate bit of S/W, or the same instance of Xastir? > > > > What packets are you wanting to send over the mountain? Your own packets > > from Xastir? Other packets? > > > > > -- > > wishing you well > Jaye, ke6sls--via the toshiba w/thunderchicken > ___ > Xastir mailing list > Xastir@lists.xastir.org > http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
Tnx, here's more details: I have an Igate running APRX and has my TNC connected to it. On Mondays, I run a short APRS check in net, so I fire up xastir to qsl each check-in. However, I would like to send a qst prior to the net to remind locals nearish to check in, hence my desire to ensure once I send out a qst, it will at least get routed through my Igate. I have also had issues when using xastir where local hams in range of my Igate didn't get the packets via the aprs servers which can be rather frustrating. does that help? tnx, 73 j On 08/28/2018 07:32 AM, Curt, WE7U wrote: > On Mon, 27 Aug 2018, MJ Inabnit wrote: > >> I have xastir running via internet connect, however, I would like to >> figure out a path so it would push packets to my Igate with a wide path >> of 2-2 to make it over the mountain. Is there a way to do that? > > Need more data. > > Is your igate a separate bit of S/W, or the same instance of Xastir? > > What packets are you wanting to send over the mountain? Your own packets > from Xastir? Other packets? > -- wishing you well Jaye, ke6sls--via the toshiba w/thunderchicken ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
Are there any digipeaters between you and your nearest igate (over the mountain)? A longer path will use more digipeaters but will not make the RF signal go farther without one. But I see you're located near Eureka so anything is possible! :) Max KG4PID On Monday, August 27, 2018, 8:13:56 PM CDT, MJ Inabnit wrote: I have xastir running via internet connect, however, I would like to figure out a path so it would push packets to my Igate with a wide path of 2-2 to make it over the mountain. Is there a way to do that? tu, 73 j -- wishing you well Jaye, ke6sls--via the toshiba w/thunderchicken ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
Re: [Xastir] path question
On Mon, 27 Aug 2018, MJ Inabnit wrote: I have xastir running via internet connect, however, I would like to figure out a path so it would push packets to my Igate with a wide path of 2-2 to make it over the mountain. Is there a way to do that? Need more data. Is your igate a separate bit of S/W, or the same instance of Xastir? What packets are you wanting to send over the mountain? Your own packets from Xastir? Other packets? -- Curt, WE7U.http://we7u.wetnet.net "Debating an anti-gunner is like debating an arachnophobe about the importance of spiders in the ecosystem." -Stephen Wright Coordinate Converter (Android): http://www.sarguydigital.com ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
[Xastir] path question
I have xastir running via internet connect, however, I would like to figure out a path so it would push packets to my Igate with a wide path of 2-2 to make it over the mountain. Is there a way to do that? tu, 73 j -- wishing you well Jaye, ke6sls--via the toshiba w/thunderchicken ___ Xastir mailing list Xastir@lists.xastir.org http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
