[arm-allstar] theoretical maximum number of nodes on one system?

[Patrick Perdue]

Hi David:

Good to know about ARRL News. I was more interested in doing this for AR 
Newsline anyway, and I have already solved this problem for my system as 
explained below, but not on-demand. My feeling on something like this is 
that, should a service like that exist for AR Newsline, the demand would 
suddenly increase a bit, so I'd rather have at least a few simultaneous 
and completely isolated connections to start with, so there is no 
possibility that someone will accidentally bridge to the middle of the 
edition, or make unnecessary noise against someone else already 
connected when dialing in from a radio rather than a schedule, etc.

I currently pause for 10 seconds between sections on the chance of a 
simplex node or repeater needing to ID, still with time to reset to 
avoid TX timeouts. I don't break for each segment though, necessarily. 
The average ARNewsline is broken up into between 8 and 10 sections. It 
varies based on the content and presentation style from week to week.

I also normalize everything to an average of -24.01 Db RMS, which, based 
on lots of observation and running the parrot node at 55553, is about as 
high as I think it should ever be across multiple modes and possible 
transcoding. It leaves a little headroom so that things don't get 
squished and clipped on a well-configured system, and is still plenty 
hot. I do this on a per-section basis with some processing, because 
dynamics aren't consistent between presenters.


On 5/30/2023 6:38 PM, David McAnally via ARM-allstar wrote:
> On Mon, May 29, 2023 at 6:29 PM Patrick Perdue via ARM-allstar <
> arm-allstar at hamvoip.org> wrote:
>
>> Greetings:
>>
>> I am thinking of trying an experiment, basically abusing the load
>> balancing app.rpt code and dialplan logic of HamVoIP to host a highly
>> customized dial-on-demand Amateur Radio Newsline node, which will, if it
>> works the way I hope, allow for one of ten nodes to connect and get
>> their own private connection, which will automatically spawn a heavily
>> modified version of the playnews script that I am running on my system.
>> Basically, each virtual node will allow only one connection, moving up
>> to the next available node when another connection is made, but one
>> public node number will be used to access this system. However, rather
>> than creating a bridge, as would be the case with any normal node, you
>> get isolated connections, one per node, which spawns a script on
>> connect. If this works, then perhaps I will also do the same for ARRL
>> newsline.
>>
> Patrick, ARRL News is available from Allstar node 516229. It will pause
> transmission between segments. Although multiple Allstar nodes can connect
> simultaneously to listen, the first node to connect starts the playback.
> However, I don't think I've ever logged two or more nodes connected at the
> same time. So I haven't seen the need to solve that limitation on Allstar
> yet. On IRLP or EchoLink, each connection gets its own audio stream.
> Alternatively, Allstar nodes could connect via EchoLink, or TLB, if
> configured to use those modes.  See arrlnews.rfnet.link for more info.
> ARNewsline does not provide an easy way to automatically pause
> transmissions between segments. All it would take is 2 to 4 seconds of
> silence between segments. Yes, one can force breaks, which may occur in the
> middle of a sentence, and rewind to start again. I prefer to break and
> pause between logical segments for easier listening. So I have not
> duplicated this service for ARNewsline.
> Good luck!
>
> David McAnally WD5M
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