WinAPRS on LAN
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At home, I run APRS in a way that some of you might want to try.   

First about my network:

I use a LinkSys Etherfast Cable/DSL Router.  More info about this unit here:

http://linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=20&grid=5

I have it set up to act as a router, as a NAT device, DHCP client, but NOT a DHCP server.   All the computers on my network have fixed IP addresses.   So, the :LAN side of the router is the default 192.168.1.1.   

Under port filtering, I direct 14439 and 23 to the .104 WinAPRS server.  This effects what people can get to from the Internet.   It has no effect between the computers on the LAN side.  

I run WinAPRS 2.4.8 on a Compaq Prolinea 5100e.   This is an old, small desktop, P90, I think.   I run NT40 workstation.   This combination is very very stable.   The OS has been running for months.    I can't say the same for WinAPRS 2.4.8, although it's better than 2.4.7.   

I have the following set under TCP Server settings:

bulletAutostart TCP connection (random APRS server)
bulletFeed (echo) local data to TCP/IP
bulletAuto Re-Connect
bulletEnable outgoing 3rd Party messages
bulletEnable APRS server (incoming clients) 
bulletListen on port 14439
bulletEnable Web Server
bulletWeb Server port 81

I tried to turn on 

bulletEnable IGate One-Line Email (via SMTP)
bulletEnable IGATE NTS message email (via SMTP)

For some reason, it takes it when I close the window, but when I re-open, they're turned off again.   Anyone know why?        

I use the new rotate.aprs.net to get the national feed.  

As you can see, I'm setting up as the local I-gate.   I'm using port 81 since I have PWS running on another computer as port 80.  The weird thing is, I say to listen on port 14439 for other clients.   That doesn't work.   I don't know why.

 

Now, my desktop system is a 400 MHz Compaq Persario running Win 98, first try.   It's about as stable as any Win98 system, not very.   But it's my main work station and where I like to run applications.  

In that WinAPRS I'm using this as these as the only active line in aprserve.txt:

192.168.1.104    23
192.168.1.104    14439

The internal IP address of the APRS server and the port number.  23 works, 14439 doesn't.  I don't know why since I've told the server to specifically turn on for that port.   

So, when my WinAPRS server is up and running, I can start WinAPRS on my desktop computer, I connect to my APRS server and get the WinAPRS data there.   

If I could figure out how to do it, I would like to have a choice... either get the full national feed on port 23, or just the local only feed on 14439, or some other port.   All I get now is the full stream from the server.   For some reason, the UE errors WinAPRS have don't pass to the desktop.  

This was one of those things where I didn't expect it to work, but it does, now I want to perfect it.   Any suggestions?

Let me know if you have any suggestions or additions to this:

Ray, KD4BBM

Last updae:  01/14/08

 
Except for portions owned by others, Copyright: Ray Vaughan, 2008

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