[aprssig] Aprs-is / aprs-vhf packet rate limit guidelines

[Steve Dimse]

There is not one single right answer. You need to evaluate how  
valuable the objects you are sending are to the worldwide community.  
Remember that every object you post will be seen by thousands of  
people. Is it worth it?

I'd guess most people aren't going to be all that interested in the  
state of a local power distribution system, which means you should  
pick a lower rate than, say, the earthquake daemon. Earthquakes can  
trigger tsunamis quite a distance away, so they have a greater  
interest than a power outage.

I'm also concerned about anything that sends a lot of automatic  
packets triggered by an emergency condition. Say there is some sort of  
massive power failure, and your software wants to generate tones of  
packets. At the same time, some people may need to rely on APRS for  
comms. IGates can be configured to send internet packets to rf, so at  
the very time APRS really needs bandwidth, your application is sucking  
it up...

Steve K4HG

On Jan 7, 2009, at 1:46 PM, Matthew Asham/BCWNS wrote:

> I have a few methods in mind to prevent flooding of the APRS-IS  
> network (such as limiting object creation to a lat/long with X KM
> radius or only presenting a new object if a certain number of  
> customers are affected), but would like to get a sense for what is
> considered 'excessive' in terms of a single node transmitting new  
> objects via APRS-IS and APRS-VHF/1200.
>