[Dxspider-support] Spider Nodes used by ROS to auto-spot

VK3AMA vk3ama at gmail.com
Fri Jul 9 03:56:05 BST 2010


While researching ROS cluster spots arriving at HamSpots.net via the 
Cluster, I have discovered how the ROS software is auto-spotting to a 
list of nodes that may be of concern to the Node Sysops.

The following Spider Node addresses are hard-coded in the software.

dxc.us6iq.com
dxc.ham.hr
9a0dxc.hamradio.hr
remo3.renet.ru
cluster.sk4bw.net
ax25.org
sk3w.se
sector7.nu
sm7gvf.dyndns.org

ROS software establishes a connection at startup using your callsign and 
varies which node it connects to, not always the same node.

When a qso is logged  a spot is auto generated (there is no option in 
ROS to turn this off that I could find) and the text of the spot is 
changed based on another hard-coded list of messages. This is obviously 
done to give the impression that the spot is sent from a human (unlike 
the past flooding of the network, same text and same node). No where in 
the ROS FAQ or User Guide is this behaviour documented.

I ran ROS in RX mode today, after a callsign was decoded, I hit the log 
button and it sent a spot to the cluster without permission with my name 
and call thanking the other station for the QSO.

A quick review of recent ROS spots shows the same nodes being used and 
similar style comments.

What other surprises are hidden in this software?

de Laurie, VK3AMA




More information about the Dxspider-support mailing list