[aprssig] THOUGHTS ON RELIEVING APRS CONGESTION ON 144.39

[Bob Bruninga]

> In East Tennessee, we found that our problem 
> was too many packets from outside of the area. 
> Here's ... how we addressed this situation...

[limit wide area mountain top digis to 1 hop]

Yes!  You nailed it.

And because of your reminder, I'm going back to my aprs.org diagram and change it to only support one-hop on all inputs.  That is what I was thinking, but for simplicity I put down WIDEn-N.  Ill change that to WIDE1-1 or WIDE2-2.  

Afterall, if this is at a super site, worth all the effort to add alternate inputs, then it certainly covers a wide area...

Bob, WB4APR

> The digi's in East Tennessee typically have a 
> HUGE coverage area because of our mountainous 
> terrain. Without restricting what they digi on, 
> we frequently see packets from hundreds of 
> miles away (i.e. from Florida, Arkansas, Ohio,
> Missouri, etc.) in our area. These packets are 
> needless and reduce the reliability of the 
> local area packets.
>
> The ... Kantronics KPC3+ [are] configured:
>
> UIDIGI ON TN,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2
> UITRACE TN,30
> UIFLOOD TEMP,30,ID
>
> This... provides one or two hops to any station 
> in the area using recommended paths. We have 
> found that this is enough to facilitate local
> situational awareness, getting local traffic 
> into an iGate and local messaging.
>
> We do not digi on WIDE2-1; that is generally 
> used in conjunction with WIDE1-1 as in 
> WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1. We digi on WIDE1-1, then let 
> the WIDE2-1 die or possibly be picked up by 
> a digi outside of the area.
>
> ... in our area with our very wide area digis 
> a single hop is sufficient for 90%+ of the 
> day-to-day traffic and limiting in such a way 
> has improved the efficiency of our local network.
>
> We also...[can use] TNn-N if we need wider 
> coverage and support TN to take advantage 
> of some older TNCs in the area which we have 
> not been able to get updated to the new 
> WIDEn-N paradigm.
>
> ... it works very well and has dramatically 
> reduced the number of out-of-state packets 
> we hear in our area and has greatly improved 
> the reliability of our local network.

> William McKeehan
> KI4HDU
> http://mckeehan.homeip.net