[drats_users] Ratflector?

[Dan Smith]

> Does anyone else think it might be good to have a Ratflector that
> DOES allow RF linking into it?

Man, you're just really not paying attention these days, eh? :)

> That (to me) seems to be the "really cool feature" that could have a
> lot of nifty things done with it... (especially as it relates to
> position reporting and mapping...?).  But perhaps I'm missing why
> it's detrimental...

I am planning to set up another one on port 9001 to dedicate to RF
linking, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.  I need to tweak
something in the code to make it easier to have two running at once.

The reason I want to keep at least one free from RF linking is because
of what you describe with the repeater tail.  A lot of other junk
comes over the wire with the corruption and interference you can get
with RF, as you know.  Keeping at least one ratflector nice and clean
for testing makes it fast and predictable without all the muck.

Further, I really need to make the repeater app aware of blocks and
exhibit a little bit of intelligence like what an ethernet switch
does.  If lots of people have RF linked to it, then a lot of packets
end up getting thrown out of a whole lot of radios for no reason.
Imagine how unscalable D-STAR would be if every repeater on the
gateway repeated everything everyone says everywhere ... :)

-- 
Dan Smith
dsmith#danplanet.com, s/#/@/
www.danplanet.com
KK7DS