Network - tweaking and perfecting

[Larry Tyree]

I received a disturbing report last night that the network "sucks".

Glad I wasn't serious in the contest because it surely made me concerned.

The early indication is that the 30 second retry was too long.  Probably
this station was using it for a multi-single and if a QSO didn't get 
updated immediately, they had to wait 30 seconds for a retry. 

One obvious question is why did the retry need to happen?  Maybe there
was an RF problem - and if that was fixed, it would be okay.  The other
answer would be to make the retry timing a programmable parameter that
can be optimized to the specific installation.  Certainly a much shorter
value (say 5 seconds) could be used if you are only using two
computers.  Or I could get real fancy and measure the number of computers
in the loop and automatically set the retry time for 5 seconds * number
of computers.  That would not be too hard.

Maybe it would only affect the first few retries and then go to the 30
second ones (assuming a computer is rebooting or something).

I would be interested in hearing how others faired with the network
this weekend (I assume also with only two computers) so I can come
up with the best solution for the two computer case.

73 Tree N6TR
tree@contesting.com