KRG News - 2nd February 2008

GB3KD Connection Timeouts

Users with the latest version of the Echolink software and a router may sometimes experience difficulty connecting to GB3KD. You may hear the repeater announce that someone has connected, only to hear them time out and disconnect a minute later. A normal Echolink connection is held alive by the regular exchange of UDP packets. What's happening in this case is that their UDP packets are reaching 'KD, but the return packets from 'KD aren't able to get back through their router, because they haven't "opened" UDP ports 5198 and 5199.

With the old versions of Echolink, it was imperative to open these ports if a router/firewall was installed. But version 2 includes a workaround which enables it in most cases to connect to other peers running version 2, even if the ports haven't been opened. In other words it encourages laziness. The problem is, this workaround doesn't work if the peer is running an old version of Echolink, so it is still necessary to open the ports in order to connect to these peers.

GB3KD behaves as if it was running Echolink version 1.6. Anyone who wishes to connect to it MUST therefore open their UDP ports. It doesn't use the Echolink program, so it cannot easily be upgraded until the exact details of the new protocol have been discovered.

Packet Radio System

For the last few months, the 2m access port on 144.850 MHz has been very unreliable, due to a faulty t/r relay in the rig. This is now fully repaired, and was reinstated on 2/2/08. The 70cm access port on 432.675 MHz was also suspect, as it hadn't heard a signal in months. However, the rig was removed for testing, and appears to be working correctly. The port was reinstated on 2/2/08.

The links with Abdon Burf, Malvern and Birdlip are off line due to faulty receivers, and the link with the newly-reinstated Clee Hill node is not yet in operation because the TNC EPROM needs re-blowing to cater for FEC operation. Thus none of the RF links are operating at present. The Internet linking continues to provide connectivity with wider the network however.

Websites

The "Not The KD News" (NTKDN) section of the GB3KD website is not currently being maintained, due to a lack of time. This is a popular section of the site, and will be updated as and when the author has some free time. Meanwhile, if you think you could help with the intelligence gathering or writing, please contact Paula.