APRS.fi and Good Path determination

[IZ0QWM Raffaello]

Hi folks,
we are trying to adopt in Italy the New Paradigm. For that reason we
use the Network Analysis tool of UI-View to track all the PATHs.
It's very usefull. In this way everyone of us that finds himself in
the lines not GREEN, can make his adjustment to be compliance with the
New paradigm.

I have also found all the e-mail addresses of the callsigns in the RED
and ORANGE lines and I have adviced them to make their adjustments.

Unfortunatelly I receive answers to my email that says: "I see in
aprs.fi : Good Path"

Than, the answer to you: How do you determinate if the path if it's
good or not ?

A practical example:

IW3IMM-9 has IR3AO*,TRACE4-4,qAR,OE7XGR

This is not at all a good PATH for the New Paradigm but APRS.fi says:

IW3IMM-9>T6QW11 via IR3AO*,TRACE2-2,qAR,IQ3MF-15 Good Path

and this information is deleterious for our group that wants to force
the adopting of the new paradigm.

Thank you very much for you attention and in advance for you answer.

73 Raffaello IZ0QWM

[Heikki Hannikainen]

Hi,

On Tue, 5 Apr 2011, IZ0QWM Raffaello wrote:

> I have also found all the e-mail addresses of the callsigns in the RED
> and ORANGE lines and I have adviced them to make their adjustments.
>
> Unfortunatelly I receive answers to my email that says: "I see in
> aprs.fi : Good Path"
>
> Than, the answer to you: How do you determinate if the path if it's
> good or not ?

Please see the manual: http://wiki.ham.fi/Aprs.fi_Info_pages#Path_advisor

> A practical example:
>
> IW3IMM-9 has IR3AO*,TRACE4-4,qAR,OE7XGR
>
> This is not at all a good PATH for the New Paradigm but APRS.fi says:
>
> IW3IMM-9>T6QW11 via IR3AO*,TRACE2-2,qAR,IQ3MF-15 Good Path

The path advisor on the info page only looks at the most recent packet
from the station, and, unfortunately, does not account for proportional
pathing. It'd be good to look at the older packets, I'll have to see if
it would be doable without too much of a performance penalty.

If the last packet happens to be TRACE4-4, aprs.fi will not say it's good,
it'll recommend for decreasing the hop count to 2 or 3. It'll also
recommend WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 at that point: http://aprs.fi/info/a/IW3IIP-9

I have nothing against using TRACE as such, there are perfectly good
reasons to do so at times, and I wouldn't like to complain about that. It
would be good if the digipeaters would handle WIDE as TRACE so that the
paths would be traceable.

I'm happy to hear that people are looking at the path advisor and taking
it into account. Maybe it would be time to start giving 'suboptimal'
ratings for plain RELAY and WIDE paths (even if the hop count is low) and
advice to switch to WIDEn-N.

- Hessu

[IZ0QWM Raffaello]

Thank you Hessu for your answer,
using your same words I can say:

As,

> The path advisor on the info page only looks at the most recent packet
> from the station, and, unfortunately, does not account for proportional
> pathing.

> Maybe it would be time to start giving 'suboptimal'
> ratings for plain RELAY and WIDE paths (even if the hop count is low) and
> advice to switch to WIDEn-N.

If you see the WIDE* (as example) or you see RELAY, TRACE, and so on,
you can write a note that invites to use the New Paradigm.
Just like the one that you already write when a station has a
Seriously Bad path.

73 Raffaello IZ0QWM