[Dxspider-support] node & user information

[Martin Davies G0HDB]

On 3 Jan 2017 at 12:09, Dirk Koopman via Dxspider-support wrote:

> While I am in a development mood, I would like to address the issue of 
> node and user broadcasts. The question is this:
> 
> 1. Do we need to know whether and where users are connected?
> 
> 2. If yes to 1), do we need to know in (approximately) real time?
> 
> 3. What about nodes?
> 
> The issues are that PC92 user and node connection information takes up 
> the majority of the bandwidth that DXSpider uses. I contend that it 
> would be cheaper to flood route talk messages and "personal" mail (if 
> anyone actually uses that any more) and switch off PC92 "add" (A) and 
> "delete" (D) messages than carry on as we are. That would leave us with 
> PC92 "config" (C) and "ident" (K) messages. Even C messages could be 
> dispensed with and user location inferred from other traffic (like 
> spots/chat/announces). Another option might be to only use A and D 
> messages for nodes.
> 
> Discuss

Hello Dirk (and all), re: the discussion points about the dissemination of node and user 
information throughout the Cluster, here are my thoughts...

1.  Do we need to know whether and where users are connected - ideally yes, so that a 
    user can easily see who else is connected either to their local node or to another 
    node.  For example, I might want to initiate a 'talk' with another user and if I have no 
    way of knowing whether or not that user is connected to a node in the Cluster then I 
    would be 'firing blind' if I tried to send a talk (or other form of message) to the other 
    user.  The suggestion of flood-routing talk messages (and mail messages) is OK but I 
    would prefer to be able to find out beforehand if a user is actually connected before 
    generating a talk to him/her.

2.  Do we need to know, in near-real time, when a node or a user connects to or 
    disconnects from the Cluster - probably not.  I fully understand the network bandwidth 
    and other problems that can arise from having the PC92 messages, especially the A 
    and D flavours, flying around the Cluster so it definitely seems sensible to take a look 
    at how these traffic volumes could be reduced.  Perhaps an alternative to the 
    near-real time dissemination of user adds and deletes would be for a node to only 
    provide details of its connected users on demand, for example when someone 
    somewhere does a 'show/conf' or a 'show/sta' command.  Alternatively perhaps a 
    node could broadcast a list of its connected users every few (eg. 5) minutes - the 
    volumes of such traffic would hopefully be much lower than the incessant flood of 
    PC92A's and PC92D's that exists at present and would still enable a reasonably 
    up-to-date list of all connected users to be maintained by all nodes throughout the 
    Cluster.

3.  The option of restricting PC92A's and PC92D's to node adds and deletes would be 
    fine if there's another means of querying/maintaining the list of users connected to a 
    node - see 2. above.

I hope this is helpful; feel free to shoot the ideas down in flames if you think they're rubbish!

--
73, Martin G0HDB


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