[OZAPRS] iGates and RF

[Howard Small]

  Bob Bruninga commented on this topic this week. His comments follow.

Howard
VK4BS

Igates never send anything back to RF except the RARE
MESSAGE intended for an individual recepient who has been heard
in the area. And if-and-only-if it sends a message, it will
also send one and only one position report for the originator of
that message.

An Igate should not go beyond 1 hop unless he has
positive concurrence of all APRS hams within 2 hops in ALL
directions, that they welcome his incursion into their areas.
In normal APRS networks, where every digi can hear 4 others at
least, it is IMPOSSIBLE to manage the network when Igates are
spamming beyond their local digis. Especially when the Igate
owner does not even look at his messages from irate locals
asking him to stop it.

AN Igate must be 2-way! That is the only way that
APRS works. But you must understand what this means. "2-Way"
means it sends everything it hears INTO THE INTERNET and it
sends ONLY ADDRESSED MESSAGES back to RF. Without this 2-way
for messages, then APRS is completely disfunctional in that
area.

And what "2-way" does NOT MEAN is flooding SPAM from out of area
into the local area. This kind of EGO-SPAMMING by an Igate
operator is NOT NORMAL APRS. It is someone intentionally
setting his Igate to FLOOD the LOCAL AREA with garbage from out
of area. This IS NOT A NORMAL APRS network setting.

Again, flooding from out of area does have some unique
applications in some speciality areas... But don't call it
"2-way" which is required for a proper APRS netowrk.. Call it
FLOODING or SPAMMING or REVERSE GATING. They are entirely
different.