[Dxspider-support] Re: Network showing 'DXC connected all over

[Darren G0TSM]

Charlie has some good points, about 10 years ago there was a DX Cluster 
'community' here in the UK. You would often get a talk message from another 
Gx Op asking if they could break in on a QSO or 'I can't hear him here' 
etc. That's all gone now, I guess it is the same on all nodes worldwide. 
There are a hell of a lot of British Op's who have drifted off onto nodes 
in other continents. The last time I did a user extract of all Gx/Mx/2x 
callsigns used for cluster access there were over 3500 (after removing 
G9LID etc). I suspect you'll be able to buy a transceiver soon where the 
VFO knob was ever touched.

I feel sorry for Dirk, he has written this really cool piece of software 
which certainly has helped my DXCC total through being able to have managed 
multiple links, thus ensuring you should always get any DX spot ever sent 
on the planet, but now we are asking him to sort out the mess we have 
gotten ourselves into by probably spending hundreds of hours changing, 
playing and tweaking the code because he has got it wrong, he hasn't, we have!.

We need a total network reconfig, I haven't a clue how it would have to be 
setup, but we have to do something as the current arrangement is crap. I 
gather from Martin's message that users on his node cannot get spots as 
GB7DXC's connection into the network is refused as 'it's already 
connected'. Yes i suppose the users could log into another node if their 
1200baud 2M or 70CM packet could reach another 100miles or so.

Unlike Charlie I really want to be able to see all the nodes, I want to be 
able to see who's connected to ZL2AQY-10, and when I see my mate Duncan 
connected i can send him a talk message and get him up on 20M for a chat. I 
dont want to send a message to a ' ghost connection'.
I want to be able to use the cluster as it was intended to be used, not 
just to syphon off and filter thousands of DX spots, but that's just me.

 From my node GB7EDX I have 8 links, each link is filtered on the input at 
the remote end, and on the output at my end. I have spent night after night 
fiddling trying to achieve a realistic view of the network through this 
filtering, impossible. But I'm also not helping the situation either, just 
doing my bit to mess things up even more.

So where do we go now?

Darren GB7EDX


PS, failing to make any sense of what I have written above just totally 
disregard it and ask Dirk nicely to write some code so that on Wednesdays 
at 0600Z all the links are flushed and the whole network is redrawn, just 
lockout the non-spider nodes ;-)


PPS Any reference to UK = The British Isles as GB7DXG isn't in the UK :-










At 13:17 20/06/2004, charlie wrote:
>Discussion you want, well here's my opinion.



>If sysops spent some time setting up regional groups of nodes the
>problem would probably end up being largely non-existant.  I work to
>ensure redundant sources of spots, expecially during contest periods.
>Beyond the spots, I believe, is largely not worth the effort!
>
>73 charlie, k1xx/4




Darren Collins G0TSM
Southampton UK
SysOp GB7EDX DX Cluster
telnet://gb7edx.com
Local RF access 144.900MHz