[Xastir] Smart RELAY digipeating

Wes Johnston wes at kd4rdb.com
Wed Jan 5 07:29:34 EST 2005


Ummm.... I've been watching this thread and think the idea is to not digipeat
RELAY by a home station if you have already heard the same packet digipeated by
the local WIDE.  That's a great idea.  So your station sits on the packet for 3
to 5 seconds before digipeating.

In the past few days is where I've gotten confused.  There seems to be talk
about KISS tncs delaying the delivery of a packet to the network.  If what I've
seen is correct, it is being said that the kiss tnc can cause the delay.  Yes,
it can, but if the packet is heard digipeated from the WIDE, that KISS mode tnc
isn't going to care... it's got "data" in queue and is just waiting for access
to the channel.

The trick to make this work _correctly_ is to use 6-pack TNCs.  They communicate
the busy/clear status back to the host computer.  Unlike KISS tncs, you can't
queue a packet in the tnc for minutes at a time... the host must watch for the
channel to be free, and as soon as it is, the host must start sending data
forcing the TNC on air.  This of course moves the host computer one step closer
to the radio and allows us to abort digipeating a relay packet.

Sure is a shame that KISS tnc's don't communicate the CD led status via one of
the rs232 handshake lines.

Wes
--



Quoting BDonnell at ar-northwest.com:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Curt, WE7U [mailto:archer at eskimo.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 9:00 AM
> > To: Tapio Sokura
> > Cc: xastir at xastir.org
> > Subject: Re: [Xastir] Smart RELAY digipeating
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Tapio Sokura wrote:
> >
> > > Still I'm a bit sceptical about this
> > everyone-transmits-at-the-same-time
> > > approach when there are stations involved that don't use
> > the digipeating
> > > functions of a conventional TNC. I have mine in KISS mode
> > so some delay
> > > is added from the serial communications (both ways) and from the
> > > processing occurring on the computer. When the packet gets
> > back to the
> > > TNC from the computer to be digipeated, the channel is
> > probably already
> > > occupied from the digipeats by other stations. But I'm not saying it
> > > can't work..
> >
> > Understand.  You'd have to tweak your KISS settings so that station
> > was much more agressive on channel.  That'd be fine for igating but
> > not for normal operation.
>
> When using serial KISS mode, Xastir could make those TNC settings changes
> interactively.  Perhaps the easiest would be to set the TNC to full-duplex
> mode - that should assure a collision-rich environment...
>
> 73, Bob, KD7NM
>
> >
> > --
> > Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
> > "Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
> > "Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
> > "The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"
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> >
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