[CQ-Contest] Reverse Beacon Network - After-Action Report

[Barry N1EU]

Just too another glance at that cluster client screen I posted (link
below)  . . . and why is K1TTT spotting W2PV at 3 different 15M
frequencies in 7 minutes?  And I bet the W2PET five minutes later is a
busted W2PV.

So in that 19 minute interval shown on 15M, K3LR is sending valid
spots to RBN and K1TTT and W3LPL are sending total nonsense that
could've (should've) been filtered out.

73, Barry N1EU

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Barry N1EU <n1eu.barry at gmail.com> wrote:
> Although I greatly appreciated all the spots from the RBN and the hard
> work by the network/server admins, I still feel a great improvement
> would be more screening (“CQ” and callsign database validation) by the
> skimmer servers.  I noticed myself and others spotted numerous times
> when calling dx.  And there sure wouldn’t be a downside to eliminating
> all the LW3LPL and “EK” spots.  Losing potential spots of dx not in
> the database would be a small price to pay for really cleaning up the
> RBN contest spots.  And those “lost” spots can always be entered the
> old fashioned way by human ops.  I got a laugh at one point when I
> glanced up at my cluster client screen - have a look:
>
> http://n1eu.com/skimmer_spots.gif
>
>  . . . the irony of W3LPL spotting itself as LW3LPL and W4LPL - it
> just doesn't seem right that the system allows this
>
>
> 73, Barry N1EU
>
> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 7:29 AM, Pete Smith <n4zr at contesting.com> wrote:
>> Wow!  What a weekend - records falling in bunches, 5 bands open for
>> contesting at once.  And I'm happy to report that the RBN was mostly up
>> to the challenge.
>>
>> First, the big numbers.  The RBN handled 1.578 million spots on
>> Saturday, and 1.691 million on Sunday, or an average for the 48 hours of
>> *18.9 spots/second.  This is roughly double last year's record average
>> (also in CQWW CW)*, and is a measure both of how much the bands have
>> improved and how many more people are contributing to the RBN.  Thank
>> you all!
>>
>> In case anyone wondered, we did have some trouble with the DX Spider
>> Telnet server (telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000) on Sunday morning,
>> as the load built to even a higher level than on Saturday.  Felipe PY1NB
>> did some quick first-aid and got it running again within about a
>> half-hour.  Meanwhile, the AR Cluster V6 server
>> (arcluster.reversebeacon.net, port 7000) continued to deliver spots at
>> full bore, though to a smaller audience than our main and
>> long-established server.
>>
>> There are also some signs that the load that CW Skimmer puts on Reverse
>> Beacon participants' computers may be starting to cause problems.  A
>> number of Skimmer ops reported trouble with less than 100% decoding of
>> signals, due to excessive CPU loading from too many decoders running at
>> once.  At least the failure mode appeared to be graceful - my node, for
>> example, stayed up unattended all weekend despite being on an anemic
>> dual-core Pentium machine.
>>
>> One surprise, at least to me, was the strong user demand for the main
>> Reverse Beacon web page, which peaked at 384 simultaneous users, also on
>> Sunday.  Log data suggest that most of these users were using the site
>> to track spots of specific stations (maybe their own?), which puts an
>> additional load on the database server.  However, the new hardware
>> handled it very well, and that gives us a good level of confidence for
>> the rest of the contest season.
>>
>> Future plans?  Well, we intend to do some work on streamlining DXSpider
>> so that it will handle the heavy throughput better.  There's no need for
>> a lot of the features that put a drag on performance in the RBN server
>> role - for example, the server doesn't accept DX spots from users, or
>> Announce messages or WWV messages. Meanwhile, we're on the lookout for
>> good new features to add to the mix.  Tell us what *you'd* like!
>>
>> --
>> 73, Pete N4ZR
>> The World Contest Station Database, updated daily at
>> www.conteststations.com
>> The Reverse Beacon Network at http://reversebeacon.net,
>> blog at reversebeacon.blogspot.com,
>> spots at telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000
>> AND now at arcluster.reversebeacon.net port 7000
>>
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>