[Xastir] Fwd: help

[Lee Bengston]

Oops, meant for this to go to the list.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lee Bengston <lee.bengston at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 11:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Xastir] help
To: russo at bogodyn.org


On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Tom Russo <russo at bogodyn.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 08:59:14PM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <lee.bengston at gmail.com> flavor, containing:
>> On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 5:29 PM, Tom Russo <russo at bogodyn.org> wrote:
>> > On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 10:18:36PM +0000, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <davekh at gmail.com> flavor, containing:
>> >> I never have ? inet > rf ?enabled ? that would mean all the inet traffic
>> >> would get transmitted out onto RF - I wouldn't want that.
>> >
>> > No, it wouldn't.
>> >
>> > INET->RF only gates to RF messages that are directed from a station heard
>> > by your igate only on APRS-IS to a station that your igate has heard on RF.
>> >
>> > In addition, you can configure it to gate traffic from specific stations from
>> > APRS-IS to RF, but by default it does not do this.
>> >
>> > Gating "all the inet traffic" to RF would be a disaster, and there is no
>> > recent vintage software that would do that no matter what buttons you click.
>>
>> There's no recent software with a GUI with buttons that would do that,
>> but the two lightweight daemons out of Finland, aprx and aprsg, will
>> do that relatively easily.  Both are intended to be used with no
>> filter when logged into an IS server, but if the user puts a filter in
>> there such as m/100, everything received within a 100km radius will be
>> gated to RF (if the software has been configured to send from IS to RF
>> and if there's no transmit filter on the RF side).  So to anyone
>> trying out aprx or aprsg for the first time - nice little tools, but
>> be careful!
>
> Eeeek!  That's terrible.  I hope that's well documented.
>
> Since IGates should mostly be bi-directional, it's a shame that someone would
> create one that can be bi-directional and easily misconfigured to swamp
> the local RF.

There is a decent PDF manual for aprx.  It's a pretty nifty program
that can do both IGating and digipeating, and it's small and one of
the more popular apps used by those implementing IGates and/or
digipeaters in Linux based wireless routers (via OpenWRT).  The
documentation for aprsg, however, is pretty much limited to sample
config files that come with the package.

My observation with aprx and aprsg is that they are designed to work
primarily with no filter on the IS side, and when logged in (port
14580) with no filter they evidently rely on the IS server to decide
what packets are sent to them.  Not being that familiar with the
server side, what exactly is the server supposed to send to a client
when the client logs in to port 14580 with no filter?  I guess I've
drifted off topic a bit, but inquiring minds want to know.  :-)

Lee -- K5DAT