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

[W0MU Mike Fatchett]

If you have a way to filter this out then please enlighten us.  
Identifying the problem is the easy part.

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 5:42 PM, Barry N1EU wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> CQ-Contest mailing list
>>> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
>>> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
>>>
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