[aprssig] Additional IGates ?

[Steve Dimse]

On Mar 18, 2005, at 3:35 PM, William McKeehan wrote:

> It seems to me that more IGates would be a good thing and would not 
> hurt
> anything; especially listen-only IGates.

This comes up periodically. In general, the more ears the better, the 
additional load on the APRS Internet System is minimal because of the 
dup filtering. However, the concern is that every area should continue 
to have functioning bidirectional IGates. Most people only notice that 
an IGate is down when their data does not appear on findU. If the 
bidirectional IGate serving an area goes offline, but there is a listen 
only IGate nearby, then their data still appears on findU. Therefore, 
any operator of a listen-only IGate needs to maintain constant 
vigilance that the primary IGate is remaining up.

Steve K4HG