[drats_users] testing report from tonight on Beta-7

[Nate Duehr]

Hi Dan,

So far, testing has been fun.  Myself, W0RMT, and KF0RW are playing 
around tonight... and we should have hopefully a few more testers for 
our regular Tuesday night Net on W0CDS Port B tomorrow night.

(By the way, if anyone would want to join us... I could ask permission 
of one of the D-Plus Reflector owners for use of a sub-channel for a 
mixed voice/data Net on Tuesday nights and even though it's a "Colorado 
D-STAR" Net, transferring stuff through the D-Plus Reflector the other 
night worked flawlessly for myself and a number of folks hanging out on 
one of the quiet(er) Reflectors.  Might be fun to get a D-RATS Net 
going?  Anyone?)

Anyway... tonight's testing has the following notes on "weird" stuff.

- Dan, did you put the "temporary fix" in both the fixed size and the 
ascending size Connectivity Tests?  It's acting like the ascending size 
isn't fixed for the multiple rig support, but I'm not sure on that.

- KF0RW and I are able to send messages back and forth.  We both 
upgraded from Beta-5 to Beta-6, and then to Beta-7.  W0RMT upgraded 
direct from Beta-5 to Beta-7 (if that matters) and when I send messages 
to him, they never show up on his Messages window, but the Event Log on 
both ends says the messages were transferred successfully.  Is there a 
path thing of some sort going on here?

- I've noticed for a while now that if the packet for the "response" 
between the "Waiting for Reply" and when a file or message transfer 
starts, gets hammered... the whole thing stops with "Transfer 
Interrupted"... but if packets get hammered AFTER that, the transfer 
code does retries, and eventually seems to get the message or file 
through.  Could the initial Negotiation also try a little "harder", 
maybe three times, before giving up?

- I attempted something that never has really worked all that well, and 
it relates to the above request, I think.  We had Bud W0RMT start a file 
download from my station, and at the SAME time I tried to send a Message 
to Steve KF0RW.  The initial negotiation of the message transfer gave up 
with "Transfer Interrupted" because the frequency was already busy with 
W0RMT's station and mine going back and forth with the file transfer. 
It would be nice if multiple stations could do multiple things and it 
would just "take longer" but not give up... or at least not give up 
quite that easily.  I was eventually able to stuff the message through 
with three "Send" attempts during the relatively large file transfer, 
but it had to make it past "Negotiation Completed" and get the message 
transfer thing going before it then has retries and other "error 
correction" working for it.

- During a voice discussion the other night, someone mentioned that it 
would be REALLY nice in true emergency type comms to be willing to set a 
setting where EVERYTHING is heavily error-corrected, which of course 
eats up bits in the already tiny 1200 bps... but we were generally 
discussing the topic, "Do you want it ultra-reliable, or do you want it 
fast"?  We were both saying that with Icom's voice implementation so 
HEAVILY error-corrected, there would be times when it would be nice to 
do the same to data transfer in software.  Someone could have an 
extremely sucky signal, but there would be a bunch of software-driven 
FEC in the low-speed data stream (making it ULTRA low speed, we 
understand...) that the messages or files would eventually get through.

(How the above could work on Chat is harder, I suppose.)

- Another thought I had one night was whether or not there could be an 
"ACK'ed" chat mode... I think you also had something similar to this in 
Version 1 Dan... where you could set up a list of stations that MUST 
receive your chat messages, and your station would keep track of who in 
the "group" had ACK'ed the chat message.  Maybe that's another way in 
the future "wishlist" item?

Anyway... these are all just concepts, thoughts, brainstorming... not 
sure what you like or don't like in these concepts Dan... just sharing 
ideas and notes, so you can "mold" it into whatever you like.

Brian of "D*Chat" fame was on-air on REF014C driving home the other 
night and he was joking that he should "just drop D*Chat support" since 
everyone was talking about D-RATS Dan.  Heh heh.  He was obviously 
kidding, but one comment he DID make was that he thought he should take 
a look at your packet format and see if he could get D*Chat to copy 
D-RATS chat packets.  If you have the format documented somewhere, you 
should toss him a copy of the packet format maybe... don't know how 
serious he was, but interop between the "ultra-simple" chat program and 
the more "advanced" D-RATS would be nifty, I suppose.

Have fun... sure looks like you're coding your brains out, perhaps as a 
run up to a "Dayton Release" with new features for 2009?  :-) ;-)

Nate WY0X