WA8LMF Mirror of WB4APR Website - 21 July 2008 APRS in 2002

APRS DIGIpeaters in 2002

Automatic Position Reporting System

APRS Before the New-N Paradigm:

The USA APRS Network in 2002: This web page reflects the state of the APRS network in the USA as of 2002 when APRS was 10 years old. The network was inefficient due to continued support for legacy RELAY and WIDE paths which caused significant packet duplications. . It was time to fine tune the network for the benefit of its users and travelers. Below was a 6 hour capture of almost 900 digipeaters taken from the APRS Internet feed on about 12 June 2002.

To highlight the different types of digis, the ICONS have been temporarily changed to some other existin symbol so that the colors can better distinguish the different digi types at a glance. You can zoom to your area to better see the detail. The temporary symbol table is listed below to show the translation used to display the different types of digis on the map.


To Navigate map, use ARROW keys and Page-UP/Down.

TEMPORARY Colors used to distinguish digipeater types above
OVERLAY Color DESCRIPTION
R Red dot if RELAY only
W Green Star if RELAY and WIDE
T Windows if RELAY,WIDE and TRACE
N White Star if WIDEn-N (and relay,wide and trace) and NOID is set
I Apple Icon if WIDEn-N (and relay,wide and trace) but ID is set to ON
J Jeep if Just WIDEn-N and no others supported
U Blue Phone if UI-DIGI firmware
? Red Cross if no overlay character given

As you can see in 2002, of the 900 digis, 240 were not identified by an overlay character to show users what kind of digi it is. Of those, 160 were in the USA and are shown with the red cross above. . We really do need to have all digi's properly identified by their capabilities and visible to users by their overlay character.

RECOMMENDED OVERLAY CHARACTERS: Next is the table of OVERLAY characters that should be used to identify the capabilities of each digipeater. . The overlay character is the byte between the LAT/LONG. The "/" is the default and conveys no information to the users. Replace it with the proper overlay character from the list below.

DIGIpeater Overlays
A
An Alt-Freq input digii (typically on 144.99 MHz
R
RELAY only (obsolete in 2005)
W
RELAY and WIDE (obsolete in 2005)
T
PacComm RELAY,WIDE and TRACE (obsolete in 2005)
N
WIDEn-N (and relay,wide and trace) and NOID is set
I
digipeater is also an IGate
L
A LIMITED New n-N Paradigm digi (obsolete)
S
The New n-N Paradigm digi with State SSn-N support (and ID is on)
P
PacComm digi supporting New n-N Paradigm
U
UI-DIGI firmware (should now be upgraded to S)
D
DIGI_NED (should now be upgraded to S)

Notice that the New-N Paradigm can be implemented on either the Kantronics, DIGI_NED or UIDIG ROMS, so if implemented the "S" overlay should superscede the identification of the ROM since we can still tell the type by the TOCALL version field. The U and D overlays were only needed back when we needed to distinguish their additional capabilities. . Now with the new all-North America New-N Paradigm, the "S" is the more important overlay for those digis that imlement it.

Bottom line. If it is not an "S" or "P" or "1" overlay digi in North America, then it is probbly an old digi running on obsolete parameters. . Please see if you can inspire someone to fix it.

Thanks
Bob Bruninga, WB4APR

Other APRS stuff. See SITEMAP


The Naval Academy is a registered user of APRS and WinAPRS. The purpose of this web page is to show several applications currently in use at this site and should not be considered as an advertisement or an endorsement of any commercial product. WA8LMF Mirror of WB4APR Website - 21 July 2008