[Xastir] Multiple Object Beacon Successive Transmit Delay

[Tom Russo]

On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 05:29:37PM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 12:48:11PM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <jason at ke4nyv.com> flavor, containing:
> > Right now, I am hosting about 20 object through my XASTIR station.  However, I am testing a new KISS TNC design and I noticed that when XASTIR transmits objects, it seems to shotgun all 20 at the same time.  The KISS TNC cannot buffer that much at once and it usually only catches the first one or two.  Is there a way to delay the rate at which the beacons are sent to the TNC?  Maybe a 5 second delay between each?
> 
> Are all your 20 objects created at once (e.g. by loading in the persistent
> object list from a previous run)?  It could be that is the reason for this,
> and perhaps there *should* be an offset applied to the objects when they're
> created so they don't all get their initial beacon done so close together.
> But there is not, as yet, any such early offset applied to objects created
> at start-up, as far as I know.

See also this comment in objects.c in the function "reload_object_item":

 // Right about here we could do a lookup for the object/item
 // matching the name and change the timing on it.  This could serve
 // to spread the transmit timing out a bit so that all objects/items
 // are not transmitted together.  Another easier option would be to
 // change the routine which chooses when to transmit, having it
 // randomize the numbers a bit each time.  I chose the second
 // option.

So the work of spreading out objects loaded in at start-up is done in the 
same "check_transmit_objects_items" function I pointed at previously.
It's entirely possible that since the first beacon interval is so short,
adding a mere 20% of that is not helping spread 'em out, at least not until
the decaying algorithm has really increased the inverval.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
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 stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork." - Edward Abbey