1. Topics
  2. P25 North America reflector

P25 North America reflector

Steve N4IRS
 

Robert,
I would personally like to thank you for your timely report of a issue with the P25 North America reflector. Without your quick action I would not have known about the issue and been able to take steps to hopefully resolve the issue. Please, keep up the good work.

73, Steve N4IRS
Miguel
 

Hi Steve, I have been playing/learning with P25 reflector code lately while on vacation and found a couple of things... Perhaps this one is related to the Aug 17 issues? https://github.com/g4klx/P25Clients/pull/220

(PS, the other one is purely about logging the IP address correctly... https://github.com/g4klx/P25Clients/pull/219)
Steve N4IRS
 

Miguel,
The 3 P25 reflectors on dvswitch.org are running code from late April. I see you have some updates I'll apply when I get a chance.

Thanks, Steve

On 8/25/2021 11:36 AM, Miguel wrote:

Hi Steve, I have been playing/learning with P25 reflector code lately while on vacation and found a couple of things... Perhaps this one is related to the Aug 17 issues? https://github.com/g4klx/P25Clients/pull/220

(PS, the other one is purely about logging the IP address correctly... https://github.com/g4klx/P25Clients/pull/219)
Robert Bretzman
 

Keep up the great work.Everyone very much appreciates the efforts to make our hobby more enjoyable for all.
73
Robert
K4WZV


On Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 12:28 PM Steve N4IRS <szingman@...> wrote:
Miguel,
The 3 P25 reflectors on dvswitch.org are running code from late April. I see you have some updates I'll apply when I get a chance.

Thanks, Steve

On 8/25/2021 11:36 AM, Miguel wrote:

Hi Steve, I have been playing/learning with P25 reflector code lately while on vacation and found a couple of things... Perhaps this one is related to the Aug 17 issues? https://github.com/g4klx/P25Clients/pull/220

(PS, the other one is purely about logging the IP address correctly... https://github.com/g4klx/P25Clients/pull/219)
Miguel
 

Ok Steve. One of those fixes I believe will address a lot of the audio issues on the NA_P25 reflector… curious about it and eagerly awaiting…
AK4FD (David)
 

So I have been hearing complaints lately about the audio dropping out and data packets being lost.  And I’ve experienced it quite a bit myself.  Myself and some others seem to think that maybe there are just too many bridges and links that are causing the data to not pass thru correctly.  Is this possible that is what is occurring and if so, is there really a need for multiple bridges to be attached to the Talkgroup?  Whatever it is it’s degrading the audio quality and causing people to not use TG 10200 as much anymore because of all the drop outs and difficulties...  

By the way, I have created a page & discussion group on Facebook dedicated to this wonderful Talkgroup!  It’s called “P25 TG 10200 - North America” and they can be found here:
https://Facebook.com/TG10200
https://Facebook.com/groups/TG10200

i hope the founders of this Talkgroup and maintainers of the server are okay with this, my goal was/is to bring more attention to this great Talkgroup and digital mode.  I’m a EMT/Firefighter for 25 years now and have used P25 for many years and have been a huge proponent of P25 as a great digital mode!  I would love to try and start running a weekly Net maybe on a Sunday or other night of the week to try and get more knowledge and participation.  
Steve N4IRS
 

Your traffic does not pass through any bridge. There are 150+ gateways connected. I have heard the complaint and if it's like yesterday, I could hear both sides of the QSO just fine. Please make sure your hotspot is adjusted correctly. There is quite a bit of data that passes through the host:

root@dvswitch:/home/n4irs# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0c:29:6f:cd:0f 
          inet addr:44.103.34.4  Bcast:44.103.34.7  Mask:255.255.255.248
          inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fe6f:cd0f/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2865328852 errors:0 dropped:2411 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:10327920862 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:248213662118 (231.1 GiB)  TX bytes:5358203797114 (4.8 TiB)


On 9/11/21 12:35 PM, AK4FD (David) via groups.io wrote:

So I have been hearing complaints lately about the audio dropping out and data packets being lost.  And I’ve experienced it quite a bit myself.  Myself and some others seem to think that maybe there are just too many bridges and links that are causing the data to not pass thru correctly.  Is this possible that is what is occurring and if so, is there really a need for multiple bridges to be attached to the Talkgroup?  Whatever it is it’s degrading the audio quality and causing people to not use TG 10200 as much anymore because of all the drop outs and difficulties...  

By the way, I have created a page & discussion group on Facebook dedicated to this wonderful Talkgroup!  It’s called “P25 TG 10200 - North America” and they can be found here:
https://Facebook.com/TG10200
https://Facebook.com/groups/TG10200

i hope the founders of this Talkgroup and maintainers of the server are okay with this, my goal was/is to bring more attention to this great Talkgroup and digital mode.  I’m a EMT/Firefighter for 25 years now and have used P25 for many years and have been a huge proponent of P25 as a great digital mode!  I would love to try and start running a weekly Net maybe on a Sunday or other night of the week to try and get more knowledge and participation.  


?
smime.p7s

AK4FD (David)
 

So just to clarify, I don’t think MY traffic is of issue.  My hotspot functions fine on every other Talkgroup I use.  I think the issue is one, or some, of those 150+ gateways that are connected.  Either their equipment isn’t set up right or isn’t configured correctly, or what have you.  I’d say half of all the QSO’s on my hotspot dashboard I see all have packet loss in the red...  

Somewhere, that data isn’t being passed thru correctly and it’s causing me to hear words being dropped out or even repeated twice like the data bits got stuck like a broken record.  I’m not sure how resource-intensive P25 is as far as passing data over IP but it stands to reason that with 150+ gateways of various modes such as analog, DMR, Fusion/Wires-X, NXDN, and whatever else there is connected, during the conversion to P25 there would be some data bits being lost.  To me that seems like a lot of connections even if they were all P25 which they’re not.  Bottom line is I would like to see participation and usage of the Talkgroup be much better because it has potential, but I’ve heard numerous people say they don’t use it anymore because of all the  data “problems”, so I would like to try and figure out where the issues are occurring... 
AK4FD (David)
 

In your data you posted, under RX Packets it shows 2411 dropped.  Any idea what causes that many dropped packets? 


On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 12:46 PM, Steve N4IRS wrote:

MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2865328852 errors:0 dropped:2411 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:10327920862 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:248213662118 (231.1 GiB)  TX bytes:5358203797114 (4.8 TiB)
Steve N4IRS
 

2400 dropped packets out of 231 gb

Sent by smoke signal (AT&T)

From: main@DVSwitch.groups.io <main@DVSwitch.groups.io> on behalf of AK4FD (David) via groups.io <AK4FD@...>
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2021 1:24:59 PM
To: main@DVSwitch.groups.io <main@DVSwitch.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [DVSwitch] P25 North America reflector
 

In your data you posted, under RX Packets it shows 2411 dropped.  Any idea what causes that many dropped packets? 


On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 12:46 PM, Steve N4IRS wrote:

MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2865328852 errors:0 dropped:2411 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:10327920862 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:248213662118 (231.1 GiB)  TX bytes:5358203797114 (4.8 TiB)
Steve N4IRS
 

How would someone elses gateway effect what you receive unless the person you are listening to is misconfigured.

On 9/11/21 1:16 PM, AK4FD (David) via groups.io wrote:
So just to clarify, I don’t think MY traffic is of issue.  My hotspot functions fine on every other Talkgroup I use.  I think the issue is one, or some, of those 150+ gateways that are connected.  Either their equipment isn’t set up right or isn’t configured correctly, or what have you.  I’d say half of all the QSO’s on my hotspot dashboard I see all have packet loss in the red...  

Somewhere, that data isn’t being passed thru correctly and it’s causing me to hear words being dropped out or even repeated twice like the data bits got stuck like a broken record.  I’m not sure how resource-intensive P25 is as far as passing data over IP but it stands to reason that with 150+ gateways of various modes such as analog, DMR, Fusion/Wires-X, NXDN, and whatever else there is connected, during the conversion to P25 there would be some data bits being lost.  To me that seems like a lot of connections even if they were all P25 which they’re not.  Bottom line is I would like to see participation and usage of the Talkgroup be much better because it has potential, but I’ve heard numerous people say they don’t use it anymore because of all the  data “problems”, so I would like to try and figure out where the issues are occurring... 

?
smime.p7s

Robert Bretzman
 

Bottom line there is something going on that is not normal. I am no expert but I do know many are having the same issue including myself. I would like to see everyone working together to get to the bottom of this. Stations that have issues have switched to different talkgroups and the issue goes away. I know KC1LKO Miguel is looking at the code and has found several errors. I would like to see talk group 10200 work better as it used to as I know it can. It worked very well when it was first tested on my old BM talkgroup so something has changed. Also remember the problem is intermittent.
Robert
K4WZV

Robert


On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 1:49 PM Steve N4IRS <szingman@...> wrote:
How would someone elses gateway effect what you receive unless the person you are listening to is misconfigured.

On 9/11/21 1:16 PM, AK4FD (David) via groups.io wrote:
So just to clarify, I don’t think MY traffic is of issue.  My hotspot functions fine on every other Talkgroup I use.  I think the issue is one, or some, of those 150+ gateways that are connected.  Either their equipment isn’t set up right or isn’t configured correctly, or what have you.  I’d say half of all the QSO’s on my hotspot dashboard I see all have packet loss in the red...  

Somewhere, that data isn’t being passed thru correctly and it’s causing me to hear words being dropped out or even repeated twice like the data bits got stuck like a broken record.  I’m not sure how resource-intensive P25 is as far as passing data over IP but it stands to reason that with 150+ gateways of various modes such as analog, DMR, Fusion/Wires-X, NXDN, and whatever else there is connected, during the conversion to P25 there would be some data bits being lost.  To me that seems like a lot of connections even if they were all P25 which they’re not.  Bottom line is I would like to see participation and usage of the Talkgroup be much better because it has potential, but I’ve heard numerous people say they don’t use it anymore because of all the  data “problems”, so I would like to try and figure out where the issues are occurring... 

AK4FD (David)
 

That’s partly why I stay parked on the Talkgroup all the time, and is why I created Facebook page and group to promote the Talkgroup, so that more use it and bring awareness that it’s there.  I want to see it succeed and work flawlessly like others do.  I love P25 and it’s purpose in ham radio.  Just like I switched to TGIF instead of BrandMeister.  Because I saw potential in it and all that use it.  Let’s work together like Robert said and let this Talkgroup shine!

David, AK4FD
Steve N4IRS
 

Robert,
Can you or anyone else point to another reflector with 150+ connections? I have been told that NA TAC1 works great. That reflector is running the same binary on the same host. I listened to a conversation yesterday where 2 stations were complaining about about having problems hearing each other. I heard both station without a problem. Another local user listening on a Quantar reported having no problem listening to the conversation.

On 9/11/21 2:33 PM, Robert Bretzman wrote:
Bottom line there is something going on that is not normal. I am no expert but I do know many are having the same issue including myself. I would like to see everyone working together to get to the bottom of this. Stations that have issues have switched to different talkgroups and the issue goes away. I know KC1LKO Miguel is looking at the code and has found several errors. I would like to see talk group 10200 work better as it used to as I know it can. It worked very well when it was first tested on my old BM talkgroup so something has changed. Also remember the problem is intermittent.
Robert
K4WZV

Robert


On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 1:49 PM Steve N4IRS <szingman@...> wrote:
How would someone elses gateway effect what you receive unless the person you are listening to is misconfigured.

On 9/11/21 1:16 PM, AK4FD (David) via groups.io wrote:
So just to clarify, I don’t think MY traffic is of issue.  My hotspot functions fine on every other Talkgroup I use.  I think the issue is one, or some, of those 150+ gateways that are connected.  Either their equipment isn’t set up right or isn’t configured correctly, or what have you.  I’d say half of all the QSO’s on my hotspot dashboard I see all have packet loss in the red...  

Somewhere, that data isn’t being passed thru correctly and it’s causing me to hear words being dropped out or even repeated twice like the data bits got stuck like a broken record.  I’m not sure how resource-intensive P25 is as far as passing data over IP but it stands to reason that with 150+ gateways of various modes such as analog, DMR, Fusion/Wires-X, NXDN, and whatever else there is connected, during the conversion to P25 there would be some data bits being lost.  To me that seems like a lot of connections even if they were all P25 which they’re not.  Bottom line is I would like to see participation and usage of the Talkgroup be much better because it has potential, but I’ve heard numerous people say they don’t use it anymore because of all the  data “problems”, so I would like to try and figure out where the issues are occurring... 


?
smime.p7s

Robert Bretzman
 

Steve, I am not aware of any other reflector with that many clients connected. Maybe a good test would be to try to see if we can get a large group connected on a different reflector and see if the issue follows. I have thought that the l# of clients connected just might have something to do with it. Just let me know If I can help the troubleshooting process in any way.
Robert
K4WZV


On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 3:56 PM Steve N4IRS <szingman@...> wrote:
Robert,
Can you or anyone else point to another reflector with 150+ connections? I have been told that NA TAC1 works great. That reflector is running the same binary on the same host. I listened to a conversation yesterday where 2 stations were complaining about about having problems hearing each other. I heard both station without a problem. Another local user listening on a Quantar reported having no problem listening to the conversation.

On 9/11/21 2:33 PM, Robert Bretzman wrote:
Bottom line there is something going on that is not normal. I am no expert but I do know many are having the same issue including myself. I would like to see everyone working together to get to the bottom of this. Stations that have issues have switched to different talkgroups and the issue goes away. I know KC1LKO Miguel is looking at the code and has found several errors. I would like to see talk group 10200 work better as it used to as I know it can. It worked very well when it was first tested on my old BM talkgroup so something has changed. Also remember the problem is intermittent.
Robert
K4WZV

Robert


On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 1:49 PM Steve N4IRS <szingman@...> wrote:
How would someone elses gateway effect what you receive unless the person you are listening to is misconfigured.

On 9/11/21 1:16 PM, AK4FD (David) via groups.io wrote:
So just to clarify, I don’t think MY traffic is of issue.  My hotspot functions fine on every other Talkgroup I use.  I think the issue is one, or some, of those 150+ gateways that are connected.  Either their equipment isn’t set up right or isn’t configured correctly, or what have you.  I’d say half of all the QSO’s on my hotspot dashboard I see all have packet loss in the red...  

Somewhere, that data isn’t being passed thru correctly and it’s causing me to hear words being dropped out or even repeated twice like the data bits got stuck like a broken record.  I’m not sure how resource-intensive P25 is as far as passing data over IP but it stands to reason that with 150+ gateways of various modes such as analog, DMR, Fusion/Wires-X, NXDN, and whatever else there is connected, during the conversion to P25 there would be some data bits being lost.  To me that seems like a lot of connections even if they were all P25 which they’re not.  Bottom line is I would like to see participation and usage of the Talkgroup be much better because it has potential, but I’ve heard numerous people say they don’t use it anymore because of all the  data “problems”, so I would like to try and figure out where the issues are occurring... 


AK4FD (David)
 

So this is a QSO that just took place on NA 10200.  These 2 operators apparently could hear each other just fine, but as you will hear on my end it sounds like digital garble.  And all of my other talkgroups work fine whether it be P25 or DMR, so it can’t be my settings that are off otherwise they would be off everywhere else not just this 1 Talkgroup...  I’m wondering if it’s possible one or some of these 150+ connected links either aren’t processing the data streams correctly or maybe there is a setting off somewhere on their end.  I don’t think it’s the North America server issue I really do think it’s an issue with one of the connected bridges/links.  But listen for yourself, I’ve attached the audio file to this message, it’s 1 minute long.  Hopefully that may help you guys in trying to figure out these audio issues everyone keeps reporting...

20210912 162024.m4a

Robert Bretzman
 

David, I heard the same on my end. Not sure why this is but situations like this happen often.
Robert
K4WZV


On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 4:56 PM AK4FD (David) via groups.io <AK4FD=yahoo.com@groups.io> wrote:
So this is a QSO that just took place on NA 10200.  These 2 operators apparently could hear each other just fine, but as you will hear on my end it sounds like digital garble.  And all of my other talkgroups work fine whether it be P25 or DMR, so it can’t be my settings that are off otherwise they would be off everywhere else not just this 1 Talkgroup...  I’m wondering if it’s possible one or some of these 150+ connected links either aren’t processing the data streams correctly or maybe there is a setting off somewhere on their end.  I don’t think it’s the North America server issue I really do think it’s an issue with one of the connected bridges/links.  But listen for yourself, I’ve attached the audio file to this message, it’s 1 minute long.  Hopefully that may help you guys in trying to figure out these audio issues everyone keeps reporting...

Steve N4IRS
 

I may need users willing to test a change to MMDVMHost. You should NOT be running Pi-Star and know how to compile MMDVMHost.

Steve N4IRS
Corey Dean N3FE
 

Dropped packers could be something as simple as rejecting a ping.  Those stats are actually quite good.


On Sep 11, 2021, at 1:42 PM, Steve N4IRS <szingman@...> wrote:


2400 dropped packets out of 231 gb

Sent by smoke signal (AT&T)
From: main@DVSwitch.groups.io <main@DVSwitch.groups.io> on behalf of AK4FD (David) via groups.io <AK4FD@...>
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2021 1:24:59 PM
To: main@DVSwitch.groups.io <main@DVSwitch.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [DVSwitch] P25 North America reflector
 

In your data you posted, under RX Packets it shows 2411 dropped.  Any idea what causes that many dropped packets? 


On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 12:46 PM, Steve N4IRS wrote:

MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2865328852 errors:0 dropped:2411 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:10327920862 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:248213662118 (231.1 GiB)  TX bytes:5358203797114 (4.8 TiB)
Corey Dean N3FE
 

That sounds more like the packers are out of order.  Good luck finding that in the internet between point a and b.


On Sep 12, 2021, at 4:56 PM, AK4FD (David) via groups.io <AK4FD@...> wrote:

So this is a QSO that just took place on NA 10200.  These 2 operators apparently could hear each other just fine, but as you will hear on my end it sounds like digital garble.  And all of my other talkgroups work fine whether it be P25 or DMR, so it can’t be my settings that are off otherwise they would be off everywhere else not just this 1 Talkgroup...  I’m wondering if it’s possible one or some of these 150+ connected links either aren’t processing the data streams correctly or maybe there is a setting off somewhere on their end.  I don’t think it’s the North America server issue I really do think it’s an issue with one of the connected bridges/links.  But listen for yourself, I’ve attached the audio file to this message, it’s 1 minute long.  Hopefully that may help you guys in trying to figure out these audio issues everyone keeps reporting...
<20210912 162024.m4a>
1 - 20 of 41