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<div dir="auto"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">Rudy,</span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">Yes, there are many tens of thousands of computer generated spots for both data and CW every day which are fed to the RBN system. This number far exceeds the number of spots entered by a human into the DXCluster network.</span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">However, RBN/skimmer spots are not passed between cluster nodes and it is down to the individual sysop to decide whether they connect to RBN/skimmer sources. Even if they do, it is then down to the end user to decide whether they enable them in their feed or not. </span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">I have around 800 users at the moment and less than a handful of them have RBN/skimmer spots enabled. When I last looked, I think it was 4 people who had enabled the feed.</span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">So in my limited experience, the majority of cluster users aren’t interested in this fire hose of software generated spots. I’d be interested to know how many users other sysops have who have actually enabled the RBN/skimmer.</span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">I think of spots made by software when someone completes a QSO as human generated because someone has had to go into the software and enable that option. </span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">You’ve mentioned this before but I’m not sure of the relevance because the majority of cluster users are not seeing these RBN/skimmer spots.</span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">The reason for adding passwords between partner nodes is to help protect the network from the false injection of spots from spoofed partners. In fact, your node is a prime example of this. I noticed some time last year that you’d started connecting to me (because the connection was dropping every 15 minutes). I checked to make sure the connection was coming from what appeared to be the correct IP address so I did a set/spider to enable the link. From what I recall, you didn’t ask, but just added the link.</span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">I’d love to see more than just passwords between nodes, it would be great if there could be some encryption as well. The human generated spots which are passed around the network should be trusted and secure. I don’t want to see any spots that have been added by some nefarious source.</span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size: 16px">73 Keith G6NHU </span></div>
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<div name="messageReplySection">On 7 Feb 2025 at 13:05 +0000, The DXSpider Support list <dxspider-support@tobit.co.uk>, wrote:<br />
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<div><span style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue , Helvetica , Arial , sans-serif;">Human generated spots, compared to software generated spots, are a tiny fraction of the total number of spots, not even a rounding error.</span></span></div>
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