[CQ-Contest] Skimmer and M/2, M/M

[Pete Smith]

At 08:25 AM 6/13/2008, Hal Kennedy wrote:
>Taking an audio feed from the N4GG receiver is against the rules
>- the receiver is outside the 500 meter circle of PJ4O.  But taking a
>packet (or Skimmer) feed - one that is public - is okay by existing
>rules.  With this Skimmer feed I can raise my 160 total at PJ4O from 300
>Qs to 900 Qs in a weekend - no problem.

Good catch, Hal.  Two things occur:

In order for a Skimmer telnet host to be legal by this definition, its IP 
address would have to be *widely* publicized - otherwise it is not public 
in the same sense that the dx cluster network is.  I suspect that such 
publicity would lead quickly to strong criticism on ethical or other 
grounds.  That, of course, still leaves cheating.

Perhaps a better fix would be to suggest that Alex to limit the Telnet host 
in CW Skimmer to one IP address - 127.0.0.1, which is local to a single 
computer or network (multiple port numbers could still be 
allowed).  Originally, it was thought that an externally accessible Telnet 
host would be necessary to implement the reverse beacon network, but it 
turned out that a better way was to use web services, an access protocol 
that does not require opening a Telnet port to the outside world (and 
possible hacking).  This is the approach used by skimmer.dxwatch.com.  This 
is a quick thought, and there may be objections to this, but maybe Alex 
could include this limitation in the release of version 1.2, which already 
includes dramatic improvements in callsign validation, making it a "must 
have" for Skimmer users.

73, Pete N4ZR

73, Pete N4ZR