[aprssig] Lets Fix New-N now!

[Curt, WE7U]

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005, keith allen wrote:

> The three nearest digis that I know of near my home stn are in fact older
> tnc's that to my knowledge still use relay as the myalias line.
> Hence, the reason for the "relay".    As for wide1-1, I kind of figured
> that one of these folks might switch without informing me.  As for wide, we
> also have a couple of those floating around nearby.  Then I use wide 2-2 as
> the catch all for the other end.  yes, I agree it may seem like overkill,
> but I'm still experimenting with the better mousetrap.

Problem is:  Unless you have digipeaters around you that can do
pre-emptive digipeating (digi_ned is the only one I currently know
of which can do that), then the first unused digipeater slot listed
in your path must be acted upon before the next digipeater slot can
come into play.  If you have RELAY as the first in your path then
only a RELAY station can digipeat your signal, the rest of the
digipeaters will ignore your packet.

Same goes for the next slot, if you have WIDE in the second slot and
some home RELAY station picked you up first and digipeated you, but
the hilltops are all WIDEn-N, then they will ignore you because of
the WIDE.  That's assuming a path of RELAY,WIDE,WIDE2-2 or similar.

In the Northwest here we decided a while back that the best/least
painless way of converting was to set a date and then just switch
over to WIDEn-N.  It was done relatively quickly and there are
probably a small number of APRS users that still haven't caught up,
but we're contacting them as we find them and helping them along.

We no longer support RELAY/WIDE/TRACE/TRACEn-N on our hilltops.
Some home stations still support RELAY but more are being converted
over to WIDE1-1 all the time.

Mobiles around here tend to run "WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1", and fixed
stations mostly "WIDE2-2".  In more rural parts some people run
"WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2" or "WIDE3-3" instead.

I encourage you to drop the old paths and switch over as quickly as
possible.  Your network will be the better for it.  We have better
tracks now for mobiles/portables in the area and there's certainly
more dead-air space now then previously.

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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