[Xastir] limiting inbound internet traffic to RF based on call sign. A solution with an Application .

[Tony Hunt]

This is along the lines of a feature I asked about years ago. If you have a
look on Source forge at the development stuff theres been a bit of interest
in it on and off but the situation is that in many countries now the concept
of gating posits from the net to RF is not practical due to traffic levels
and it is scoffed at.

There is an interest in it none the less in some places.
Using the filters on the APRS servers is ok but it only works to a point in
that you have to specify the callsigns etc. If a callsign shows up in an
area that you have not got in the filter then you would never know. This
happens with interstate mobiles and portables particularly. If you look at
the callsigns being issued in some countries also then there seems little
ryme or reason as to which prefixes and suffixes go where so you have to put
everything into the nwsstations.txt file to cover it and that creates
massive traffic on RF.

You can use a wildcard type approach in the nwsstations.txt file as well so
that as an example all stations with callsigns starting with VK5 VK3 VK3 are
gated to RF. This works but can leed to alot of traffic getting gated also
with no throttles so to speak due to the way the nwsstations.txt gating
works. There is just no limit of how many frames get gated per minute if you
like.

All that said I was toying with the idea with xastir of putting some sort of
application between the APRSIS and Xastir. A small app that logs into the IS
server/s and then you get Xastir to log into it instead of the IS servers.
This app would let all message traffic pass both ways without restriction.
Also posits from RF to the Net would be unrestricted  but posit traffic from
the net to xasir would be queued or buffered with a limit per minute that
can be preset. Any posits that cant be gated due to traffic constraints
would just be dumped. This is much like other programes work like Uiview and
APRSD if you set them up to Gate to RF ..

This is an idea and it would negate the need for code changes to Xastir
(which are not popularly supported going by the amount of time thats past
and lack of action since its been raised over time) and solve the problem
and provide a solution indepandantly so to speak. I personally dont have the
skills in programming with this sort of thing but there must be someone out
there who does know how to make an app up like this using sockets.

How about it people? Anybody want to write this little app for Xastir and
for that matter it would work with other clients as well.

Tony Hunt  VK5AH



----- Original Message ----- 

> Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 09:02:39 -0800 (PST)
> From: ml41782 <ml41782 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Xastir] limiting inbound internet traffic to RF based on
> call sign
> To: xastir at lists.xastir.org
> Message-ID: <292218.39231.qm at web52306.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Can this be done ?
> Create a list of users and only thier traffic can come in via the internet
to RF ?
>
> Is this possible ?
>
> Mike