[aprssig] Old Digi_Ned Refurb

[Robert Bruninga]

> If the KPC3 design was any older, you'd have to 
> configure it with punch cards or paper tape.

But it does the job very well.

> Let's not get the cart before the horse worrying 
> about proportional pathing on the digi's own 
> position reports - digipeating is the real job of 
> a digipeater.  

Well, the second biggest load on the APRS network prior to the
New-N paradigm was the flooding of the network with too many
digipeater position reports over too large an area too often.
Switching to proportional pathing to reduce the rate at greater
hops was a real reduction in QRM.

> My wish list for the T2 digipeating (or any smart 
> digi) is the ability to rewrite the _entire_ path, 
> not just modifying the hop count on the element 
> that's currently next to be digipeated.

Such a setting would worry me significantly.  To be reliable on
demand, APRS must have consistent performance expectations for
users and not be at the whim of each digi owner to be changing
the intent of the sender, based on his interpretation of what he
thinks a packet should be used for.

One of the historical problems with the APRS network was the
completely inconsistent behavior of digipeaters due to all kinds
of different settings by the owners for a variety of
good-intentioned reasons.

The New-N paradigm has gone a long way towards bringing
consistency to the network without resorting to draconian and
arbitrary modification of user packets by individual digi
owners.

In my opinion.

Bob , WB4APR