CWOP password

[TN_Yankee]

Have I overlooked a setting for the CWOP password? They've changed
the input requirements, at least for those using a ham radio callsign
as station ID, and a password is now required. See http://www.wxqa.com/servers2use.html

I've gotten the password, but don't know where to set it within WView.

Thanks,

Mike

[Gerry Creager]

You're in luck. I can help you with the passcode.

And, honestly, we're returning to our past. When APRS was young, Steve
Dimse, K4HG, and some forward thinking folk devised a means of
interconnecting distributed stations not connected by RF, using the
Internet. This is now referred to as the APRS IS. Early in its life,
in order to restrict use by non-hams, so that traffic gated to RF didn't
originate from unlicensed folk, a fairly lightweight verification system
based on a callsign hash was devised. That's the verified connection
system.

For CWOP, for folks submitting position data but not wanting or
expecting it to gate to RF, for folks just "checking things out" before
they dive into RF, packet radio and APRS, and for some read-only
applications like network monitoring and database systems (eg., FindU) a
passcode of -1 is used. Or was. Over the years, the CWOP load has
grown to the point that APRS can no longer support the packet-per-second
loads of CWOP and APRS on its servers, due to some technical issues with
the server code, and its filter component. While there's some hope that
a complete code rewrite might make things work so much more
efficiently that this one system could handle anything thrown its way,
well, I think we're near a wall.

CWOP's now got its own servers. APRS has its own. CWOP can harvest Ham
weather data for stations participating in CWOP but the data cannot go
the other way, from CWOP servers to APRS servers. Separation of
services has a lot of benefits for both APRS and CWOP, not the least
being diminishing the need for the two to be in lockstep on protocols.
There are limitations in the APRS implementation of weather observations
that some of us are acutely aware of, for instance. It allows CWOP to
increase its data collection rate (I hope to go to 5-min intervals being
acceptable by the end of the summer, and updates to MADIS at that rate).
It allows us to better coordinate with folks like Weather Underground.
CWOP and WU are interested inimproving the overall metadata collection
on CWOP and WU station participants, so as to improve the utility and
interoperability of the data being collected.

If there are questions or other problems associated with this process,
please feel free to e-mail me.

I'll send your passcode by private e-mail

gerry

--
Gerry Creager -- gerry....@tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983
Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843

[TN_Yankee]

Thanks, Gerry. I've gotten your private email - thanks. My primary
question now, however, is what do I do with it from within WView? I
assume it has to be sent with every packet, or is there some other
process for getting my passcode into the APRS system?

Many thanks,

Mike

[Gerry Creager]

Hmmm. Looks like in cwop.c, the passcode '-1' is hard-coded.

Mark: Is this something you could please add for a next release?

For now, I'd recommend changing line 197 in cwop.c to incorporate the
passcode in place of '-1'

gerry

--

[Mark S. Teel]

Yep.

[Gerry Creager]

All, my recommendation is for everyone to use cwop.aprs.net or the
individual servers (cwop1.aprs.net, cwop2.aprs.net, cwop3.aprs.net)
until the release with configurable passcode (defaulting to -1, set-able
to a passcode corresponding to a ham callsign) happens.

Mark, thanks!

gerry

--

[TN_Yankee]

Alright - changing the servers got me back onto CWOP - thanks! I had
been using what I thought had been the recommended "rotate" servers.

Mike