Bulletins from the Pacific Packet Radio Society - page 025

The packet length of the internode repeaters should be examined closely.

6. Routing was discussed in principle. We are considering table driven routing for local transactions. This type of service is very desirable for the internodal exchanges. The tentative rules are:

a) The local node (repeater) maintains the directory of all station in the local area. This can be done on a one-time-only basis by a logon procedure. It is the responsibility of the terminal user to establish his entry in the local directory.

b) The internode (internet?) repeaters maintain directories of ALL internet repeaters in the overall network. This table will identify the existence of that node, and identify the nearest neighboring repeater(s) to which this traffic can be handed off to. This directory is the responsibility of the repeater management. Although dynamic updating of repeaters may be feasible in the future, it can be handled by voice or written request for now.

c) As in ARPANET, the terminal user can address his traffic to another user as follows: If local (the default), only the destination callsign need be typed out in the request-to-connect. For example: "REQUEST TO CONNECT: WB2CAM". When the station addressed is non-local, the at-sign It@" will be used as a connective to indicate the destination node. For example, to call W4RI from a North-Jersey repeater, type "REQUEST TO CONNECT: W4RI@K8MMO".

d) Call-forwarding. The terminal node user, when traveling out of the local area, can logon at ANY node in the network, and instruct that node to send a message to the users "home-node" to forward all call requests to the current one. Note that this table driven scheme has implicit routing!

We concluded that it would be helpful to obtain a networking specialist to discuss our wishlist with. This would allow swifter implementation of service for the local a re a, a nd simultaneously help us establish internodal exchange.

This summary was prepared by Steve Robinson, W2FPY, on January 31, 1982, for approval or amendment by the above listed attendees.

FILE QST.82.02.07.0.KA6M

Date: 07 February 1982
From: Hank Magnuski, KA6M
To: All Packet Stations

Today at 14:10 PST Howard Nurse, W6LLO, and KLRT successfully

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