[aprssig] APRS Message Idea

[AE5PL Lists]

I will reiterate my statement before: putting a store and forward
message function which acts on ALL unanswered messages on APRS-IS would
have disastrous effects.  This is from a network standpoint, not even
addressing the potential abuse brought up by others.

AJ's first post was regarding a store and forward server which would
function similar to the Sprouls' email server.  It would require the
sender to specifically request a message be stored for future delivery.
While the merits of this idea can be (and have been) discussed
adnauseam, it would not directly be problematic from an APRS-IS network
standpoint.  Of course, an abuse of such a server could cause burst
messaging which would then be harmful, but that is another issue.

It is very key to the stability of APRS-IS that only APRS packets be
passed, unimpeded and unaltered.  If one were to begin to store and
forward all messages, this would be contrary to the APRS design and
would render useless the real-time world-wide messaging capability of
APRS-IS.

You can play all you want with the APRS-IS stream going to you.  The
problem begins when you start sending unsolicited responses, etc., back
into it.  Firenet established a very localized stream where
experimenters could work with injecting objects from different sources
without affecting the whole of APRS-IS.  This was doable because they
were not dealing with messaging.  Someone connecting to one of their
servers with a standard client could see all of APRS-IS, be seen on
APRS-IS, and see all of the Firenet objects yet those Firenet objects
would not be seen on APRS-IS.

Experimentation is fine.  It is done all the time.  After all, this is
amateur radio.  But like any on-the-air experimentation, one must
consider the possible consequences of the experiment and act
accordingly.

As far as setting up a "test net", have at it.  Nothing prevents you
from testing on your own, disconnected server ;-)  But just because you
can make something work doesn't mean it should be put on APRS-IS.  The
Firenet group is a great example of understanding that.

73,

Pete Loveall AE5PL
mailto:pete at ae5pl.net 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Rich
> Posted At: Thursday, March 03, 2005 4:59 PM
> Subject: RE: [aprssig] APRS Message Idea
> 
> Maybe an expirementers stream on APRS IS is needed ?
> 
> Have a test net, for development and then migrate across to a real one