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

[W0MU Mike Fatchett]

We were also spotted on Sunday while trying to work multipliers.  I am 
curious how many busted contacts those erroneous spots are going to 
create.  In one instance I simply called the station twice and boom I 
was spotted on that Frequency.    This would be one reason to id 
frequently.j

I noticed the LPL spots too.  How is this happening?  I would hope it is 
not deliberate but just a case of timing issues in the cw memories.

Mike W0MU

J6M CQ WW DX CW Contest 2011
J6/W0MU November 21 - December 1 2011
W0MU-1 CC Cluster w0mu.net


On 12/1/2011 8:06 AM, Barry N1EU 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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