[Skimmertalk] Skimmertalk Digest, Vol 23, Issue 5

[Joe Hetrick]

> 
> Hi,
> 

Hi Luc,

Pete also answered this on cq-contest, but, I'll give my view, such as it is.  I'd like more discussion to help me see
what peoples potential use for Skimmer aggregation is, for my own view may be quite different.  I would also say that my experience is much lower
and I'm pretty open to discussion on this as a way to learn a bit more about how people view advances (!) in these sorts of areas.

> I'm monitoring DXCluster Skimmer based via Telnet connection for
> while. It's absurd how this technology is amazing. It frenetically
> sniffs calls on the bands, nothig scape from Skimmer.
> 
> We had discussed here the needing to turn DXCluster more safe by
> password access control. As this is a starting point to a new concept
> of relationship with spot network, it would be natural to apply strong
> access control to DXCluster Skimmer based to prevent someone use this
> hiden.
> 

There was another post on cq-contest that I also found interesting regarding limiting spot propagation if a DX station requests it, and I think that ties in a bit with the same feeling about the potential of Skimmer aggregation.

From my perspective the information gleaned from skimmer is only as good as the source, now that seems obvious, but, one issue with regular spotting is that *someone* heard something somewhere at some time.  Skimmer automates that approach in that an op doesn't have to sit at a station and generate spots.  From my perspective, it's a more "personal" view of what a skimmer operator might expect to hear from their particular QTH at a particular given time: eg, I look at it as a personalized window into propagation.  Both for my RX, and my TX, given that I can compare my sig reports across many bands from many different locations.  From this perspective, I just can't see how the utility of the spots are any more useful to other amateurs, versus traditional packet spots.  I think that if we were to correlate this data geographically, there would be utility that needn't be realtime (here I'm thinking of trending areas with high skimmer RX densities to get a "feel" for propagation to those areas, automagically).

So, by "source" I mean the heard stations by my skimmers are interesting mostly to me, in that I get to sleep, or be away from the shack making a living (smile) and then know when I might expect to have some success if I were to do some DX'ing at a given time that seems "lively" based on skimmer spotting history.

For me, standard packet spotting networks aren't very useful.  I'm not a big gun.  I don't have lots of power, and I don't have lots of gain.  I find that if a station is spotted, it's already too late for me.  I don't think this is bad, in fact, I quite enjoy it that way.  My only real concern is whether or not who I hear can actually hear me!

> We really need to know who is and where is everyone logged into
> Skimmer Telnet node during competitions.

I understand this point, but, as you can see, my view is more local than that (and, maybe a bit under developed).  I'm certain that someone would misuse an aggregated skimmer network, but, they might just as easily put up their own skimmer server and monitor it locally (or groups of operators could monitor a single skimmer server located in their geographic region for such information, as well), and there is nothing that can be done to prevent cheating of that nature, and in my view, doing just that would be a far more efficient and workable way to cheat over considering spots generated by skimmers located in other geographical regions.  If you alarmed on locally generated skimmer spots for mults and such, I think you'd keep quite busy, without the use of a global aggregator, however, this doesn't mean I don't think that there couldn't be abuse of which you wish to prevent, I'm just pointing out that it's not a complete solution.

Skimmer is decentralized, and individual operators will always have to answer to themselves for their conduct, just as in other areas of contesting.  Cheaters will always cheat.  I'd like more discussion on the after-the-fact log checking and doing brute force correlation between spotting data and logging data to catch people who are claiming unassisted, but, are not based on their logs.  I'd also think that additional parsing could easily capture cluster-busted calls and their appearance in logs as well.  Granted those methods push the burden of proving that you *werent* cheating if you have circumstances where your logs are suspect, and the only data being used to claim that you did cheat is based on correlations and not solid information.  The only way you may be able to combat this is to force connections to any spotting mechanism to be done via signed keys, every cluster (of any sort) user must have a signed key in order to utilize any portion of the cluster network.  These must be globally unique, etc..etc.  As with everything, motivated people could get around this; systematic cheaters will always be difficult to thwart.

I think having a global aggregator is an opportunity for everyone to get a sense for the power and use of all of the little individual skimmer operators out there.


73,

Joe KC0VKN
> 
> Why this Skimmer telnet node doesn't have strong access control to log in?
> 
> --
> 73, Luc