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wb2osz / direwolf

Dire Wolf is a software "soundcard" AX.25 packet modem/TNC and APRS encoder/decoder. It can be used stand-alone to observe APRS traffic, as a tracker, digipeater, APRStt gateway, or Internet Gateway (IGate). For more information, look at the bottom 1/4 of this page and in https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf/blob/dev/doc/README.md
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AX.25/IL2P Switch #505

Open GoDS-flux opened 7 months ago

GoDS-flux commented 7 months ago

Would it be possible, or does direwolf today support the ability to be a frame switch ? So unlike a digipeater, it would receive a frame on one RF interface and pass that frame on to another RF interface based on a lookup table. Is this something that requires direwolf to be attached to an external program today ? Thanks in advance

wb2osz commented 7 months ago

Dire Wolf already has a REGENERATE option which causes an incoming frame to be resent without modification. It is possible to define filters so packets are forwarded to different radio channels based on properties. Please be more specific about what you mean by lookup table.

GoDS-flux commented 7 months ago

Lookup Table - Not unlike an ethernet mac table, so that you could use direwolf to build a bridge/switch that would only forward frames to ports that it had a destination for

I just read the section for REGENERATE, and that might do it combined with some form of filtering

wb2osz commented 7 months ago

direwolf has a packet filtering capability (see User Guide) which can allow or block packets depending on their characteristics. Different filters can be constructed for each combination of "from" and "to" radio channel. This is only manually configured static routing. direwolf already maintains an internal table of recently heard stations and corresponding channel (radio) number where heard.

it would not be a big stretch to make it work like an ethernet switch. If the destination station was recently heard, send the packet to the channel where it was most recently heard. If not heard recently, flood the packet out all of the radio channels.

Can you give me the big picture on what you are trying to achieve? I'm assuming this is for connection oriented packet radio, not APRS.

73, john WB2OSZ

GoDS-flux commented 7 months ago

John,

Thanks for all the quick communication. I'm really just kind of spit balling a little.

There is a group out of NC that came up with this style of packet built up on dedicated links (TARPN). I'm just trying to explore ways to help packet networks scale better. This all on one frequency stuff is a little rough once you get just a few transmitters on the same frequency, but having some sort of dedicated packet switch of sorts that can operate on a few or many frequencies and bands, I think would be incredibly useful. The equipment has gotten a lot cheaper. And Direwolf seems like a really good platform.

Do you have a chat server or anything up that folks idle in, like a users channel or anything like that?

73's John N3XKD

wb2osz commented 7 months ago

https://groups.io/g/direwolf/