[Dxspider-support] Skimmers

Sun Mar 20 22:17:22 GMT 2011

Wayne asked:

> With the RBN do we really need this on the regular cluster network?

I have been watching with interest the W3LPL spots.  It became apparent 
quickly what Frank was up to, even before reading this email from him, since 
his posts were 24-7, including non-contest periods.  If his claim on "100% 
valid" is true, and if he turns down the volume as he intends, what's the 
harm?

The RBN has to date been largely un-validated in my experience.  During a 
contest weekend, the percentage of broken/busted spots was problematic, 
enough so that the RBN team has developed some spot validation routines of 
their own.  I tested the most recent incarnation of the RBN this weekend in 
the Russian DX Contest, and in the 12 hours that I was active and chasing 
spots from the RBN, I found not a single broken call.

Most users have access to the conventional cluster and the RBN, but most 
loggers (contest and everyday) can't aggregate the two sources in a single 
application.  (I say "most," but my experience is primarily with N1MM.  
WinTest can do it, but it's a tedious setup.)  As Brendan noted, K1TTT's 
WinTelnetX does a fine job of this, but it is not very user friendly, and folks 
are put off by it.  I wrote a short "How To" for my local club describing the set 
up for RBN + Cluster, hoping to help things along.

I personally have no objection to W3LPL's high quality, relatively low volume 
automatic injection of CW spots into the network.

Just my opinion.

73 - Dave N3RD

On 20 Mar 2011 at 14:03, Wayne wrote:

>   This from W3LPL to one of the locals...
> 
> **********************
> 
> Thanks for your email.
> 
> W3LPL-2 is an experimental DX spot validator tool.  It takes DX spots 
> from CW skimmers on the east coast and performs a rigorous validation of 
> every spot.  If the tool determines that the spot is 100% valid, it is 
> then posted on the DX clusters.  So far the experiment has been a big 
> success, as far as I'm aware no one has detected an spots that are 
> incorrect.
> 
> There have been a few complaints about excessive spotting volume from 
> the W3LPL-2 experiment.  The next version will reduce the re-posting 
> interval to 30 minutes for all but the most rare DX callsigns.  It will 
> also significanlty reduce the volume of DX spots on 40, 20 and 15 meters 
> for all but the most needed DXCC entities
> 
> The vast majority of comments about the W3LPL-2 experiment have been 
> very positive, and the few concerns received have mostly focused on 
> reducing the volume of spots.
> 
> 73
> Frank
> W3LPL
> 
> ****************
> 
> 
> With the RBN do we really need this on the regular cluster network?
> 
> 73
> 
> Wayne  WA1PMA
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/20/2011 5:39 AM, Brendan Minish wrote:
> > On Sun, 2011-03-20 at 10:41 +0000, gu6efb wrote:
> >> Hi Group
> >>
> >> What are sysops views on the rise of all theses skinners such as W3LPL
> >> and UT7MA just to name a few.
> >
> > It's My view that the Skimmers are extremely useful BUT have no place
> > feeding spots to the conventional network, under ANY circumstances,
> > ever.
> >
> > There is a large network of skimmers. it's called the reverse beacon
> > network (RBN), My skimmer reports to it along with about 50 others.
> > http://www.reversebeacon.net/
> >
> > The system does have telnet ports, one of which runs dxpsider however
> > the level of traffic would I suspect, bring the conventional cluster
> > knees.
> > During CW contests the system handles a truly vast amount of spots.
> > Yesterday for example during the RDX contest the RBN spider node reports
> > that there were 452,529 spots in 1 24 Hour period, My conventional
> > cluster node handled 17,246 spots
> >
> > Both W3LPL and UT7MA are active in the Russian DX contest as
> > multi-operator stations and seem to be spotting all QSO's from their
> > Search&  Pounce (multiplier)  station(s), This IS useful to other
> > contesters and a feature that many contest logging programs support. I
> > have used this on occasion myself but with my S&p run rates it's
> > unlikley to upset anyone ;-)
> >
> > I am not seeing skimmer spots from either station on the regular network
> > at present, Just S&P spots.
> > W3LPL is submitting spots to RBN currently at the rate of several per
> > minute, as are the other connected skimmers
> >
> > By the way it's quite a testament to DXspider's abilities and Dirk's
> > coding that DXSpider can handle 90+ connected users at the very high
> > spot rates that RBN sees.
> > However I suspect that there is room for further performance
> > optimisations for these traffic rates.
> >
> >> I have had a number of complaints about these skinner stations from my
> >> users.
> >>
> >> I have put the calls of skimmer stations in the badspotter list which
> >> is helping.
> > the problem with this is that both stations generate a lot of legitimate
> > spots too, I suspect it's really a user issue and it might be better
> > solved by asking stations sending skimmer spots to the regular network
> > not to do it
> >
> >> I know that CC Cluster has a NO Skimmer command is this something that
> >> we now need in Dx Spider?
> > VE7CC IS collecting skimmer spots from some skimmers directly, He did
> > ask me for a connection to my skimmer but at present I don't allow
> > inbound connections to it, I simply push a connection out to the RBN.
> > I also think the needs of the DX community are better served by a single
> > system or network handling skimmer spots rather than disparate systems
> > each carrying only a portion of the shared skimmers.
> >
> > It would be nice to see some features in Dxbase to allow easy peering
> > with nodes supporting skimmer spots so that there is no possibility of
> > these spots being leaked back to the regular cluster network.
> > perhaps a variation of the set/node command that allows a peer to be
> > declared a skimmer nod and set up the filtering rules appropriately
> >
> > there would also need to be user commands to give the users control of
> > which types of spots they see.
> >
> > I would love to run a node that carried Skimmer spots in addition to
> > regular spots but only propagate local spots back to the regular cluster
> > network.
> > Right now I mix feeds from RBN and my spider node on my local computer
> > with WintelnetX then feed this to my logging programs
> > http://www.k1ttt.net/software.html#wintelnetx
> > but it's a bit of a hack
> >
> 
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