[aprssig] Identifying TX Igates

[Lynn W. Deffenbaugh (Mr)]

On 9/19/2011 3:01 PM, la3qma at aprs.la wrote:
> Even with more than one igate in the same local area igates and 
> aprs-is should automaticly solve this "problem" so that messages get 
> trough.
> They should also automaticly understand when they should takeover i.e 
> if one igate has not been seen for a while etc.

First, you must understand what many don't seem to understand.  There is 
no APRS-IS.  None.  Nada.  Nil.  There is no "they" when it comes to 
APRS-IS.  There is no routing let along intelligent routing.  There is 
no awareness of one IGate to another.  There is nothing you can count on 
except a pipe into which you can dump packets trusting (hoping) that 
they'll get distributed around the world to anyone that may have a 
passing interest.

Each IGate, in the current APRS-IS, makes its own decisions on what to 
do and how to do it.  They are (blissfully) unaware of what other IGates 
may or may be present or what they may or may not be doing.

>
> Not sure how this can be done but i guess people on this list have 
> some ideas.

It would be something other than the current APRS-IS IMHO.  The APRS-IS 
infrastructure is so wide-spread that it would be nearly impossible to 
incrementally improve it in place and while operational.  And the 
interface to the APRS-IS has been discussed in the past and is, 
unfortunately, cast in concrete as long as there are APRS-IS clients out 
there that cannot be changed.

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - Author of APRSISCE for Windows Mobile and Win32
(Attempting to make some things incrementally better, one line of code 
at a time)