[Dxspider-support] An observation about adding Skimmer spots

[Michael Carper, Ph.D.]

This is more of an editorial, based on a recent experiment.

I was able to add Skimmer spots to WA9PIE-2.  Here's what I observed:

- the CPU utilization went from an average of about 8% to about 12% (not
too bad)
- the rate of disk consumption went up quite a bit (expected)

Those things were fine.  But the users didn't like them.  I had one guy
email me and he thought that the Skimmer spots were some sort of "DQRM"
(deliberate QRM).  He said something like, "I've never seen spots with
mode, signal strength, and WPM in them before."

So as an experiment... it's fine.  My server had no problem with the volume
of Skimmer spots... even with over 100 users connected.  (By the way, I
also "isolated" the source of the Skimmer spots so they would not propagate
outside WA9PIE-2.)

But I've turned it off.  I don't see the point in trying to do it until
users can "opt-in" for them (similar to what CC Cluster does).

Mike, WA9PIE
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