I’ve uploaded a video to show you how easy managing talk-groups is for repeater owners/operators.
You can make changes in mere seconds and any hour of the day or night without bothering anyone with your request.
I do hope other repeater owners in Minnesota will consider moving over someday. If you as a user prefer Brandmeister connected repeaters, please mention that to the repeater owners you talk to.
Check out this video.
Where is the link to the video?
Not sure why you don’t see the video or link? It’s there for me… Anyone else having a problem?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmdKTBXgw2A
The embedded video is working for me.
So with all of the advantages of BM in mind, why do people continue to settle for the K4USD network? It sounds like management is all done by one person, and it is a hassle for him to make changes on the fly. And why the MNDMR c-bridge as well? It would be great if we could all come together under one umbrella. There seems to be issues with some transmissions from Buck Hill not getting through to Brandmeister, I heard that this morning again, and transmissions through the Eden Prairie repeater seem to seldom go any farther than that single repeater.
I know that Brandmeister will not forward traffic from Radio ID numbers that are not in their registry. Once an ID is issued from DMR-MARC, it can take another 24 hours before the Brandmeister database is updated… Could be minutes, could be another day afterwards.
Yes, I would love to see the networks merge. I’m unable to support cBridge as they do not have technical capabilities to support Hot-Spots nor do they support Home-Brew or experimental connections. I like to tinker and want to see linking to other protocols, software based radios and interfaces, etc. The cBridge was designed for Motorola repeaters and there’s a license cost for every Motorola system that connects with it. K4USD provides this service at his own expense. The MNDMR folks I believe are at their license limit and would need to spend a little more cash to expand their license keys. I really feel Brandmeister is the future, but it may take a while for some to reach the same conclusion. It’s widely distributed and highly available in its design.
“why do people continue to settle for the K4USD network? ”
Usually there isn’t a need to make constant changes, so K4USD works pretty well. Lately there’s been a lot of “flux”: TS changes, FT to PTT, new TGs etc, but that won’t continue forever.
The advantages of sticking with K4USD are minimal. There are a half-dozen TAC TGs that are exclusive to K4USD. But it also has rock-solid peer connections with many of the most popular networks.
BM does have network issues not of their own making (e.g. malicious DDOS attacks) that a C-Bridge like K4USD wouldn’t be subject to. And you’ve already noticed that BM has intermittent problems with C-Bridge networks. Even if the blame isn’t on BM for that, C-Bridge networks (e.g. DMR-MARC) are still major players in the DMR world.
As for the MNDMR C-Bridge, that was a solution in search of a problem, and even that network peers with BM for non-local TGs. The operators of that network wanted complete control and isolation.
There’s always a strong impulse for uniformity, but there’s a certain flexibility that comes from having both options available. For example, devotees of N America can use K4USD repeaters when MN State is active, and TAC TG use is probably more reliable on a BM repeater. There are only two slots, and everybody can’t be pleased. But using different TS management strategies on different repeaters can please more people than an uniform approach would.
As for the Eden Prairie repeater, that’s an experimental system. You shouldn’t expect the same performance from it as the other repeaters.
I agree with Eric that BM is the future. BM has learned from the flaws of the C-Bridge approach, and created a better alternative. But we are in a period of transition between the two models, and I feel that a mixed approach is justified currently. Others will certainly disagree. But nobody is rejecting BM out-of-hand, and everybody is searching for the best way to make the potential of the mode available to the users.
I’d like to comment on a few points.
First the claim that the K4USD network isn’t subject to DoS (Denial of Service) attacks is simply false. Just because we haven’t seen the attacks yet doesn’t mean we are invulnerable to these. Brandmeister is widely distributed with repeater operators having a choice of places they can connect with identical services provided at any point. He’s a question, would you feel safer today giving your personal data and credit card details to Target (a huge company that’s had a major breach) or the Menard’s lumber store chain (who currently is a smaller target for hackers but has no recent or at least public experience defending from hackers). I know Target has a major uptake/upgrade on their technical capabilities, their budgets and priorities. Difficult question I’m sure. I at least food for thought.
As to rock solid peer talk-group connections, Brandmeister is well connected and is very reliable between repeaters on the network. I do not recall any issues between hotspot connected nodes and repeaters on their network. There has been the occasional block on unrecognized or invalid user ids. That’s an intentional protection mechanism. As to K4USD and it’s connections with other networks, for example MNDMR and K4USD… Would we agree we have seen issues?
The exclusive TAC channels exist because there have been multiple networks who extended the original list and there is overlap and disagreement about who is the official master. http://www.trbo.org/talkgroups/tac-list.html – You might also note that Brandmeister has literally hundreds of talk-groups not available on other networks. It also supports the dynamic use of any id number as a talk-group. Traffic on two repeaters creates a talk-group anyone can use.
I’d like to see our community understand the complexity in our network and not simply blame another network when they see or look only at two end points and assume or ignore all the other working pieces in between. When a press of a button doesn’t make it into the speaker of a distant radio, was it the other repeaters network bridge or was it… The cellular modem, the internet connection, or interference on the transmitters radio link, the connection between the bridges on the same network or the connections from their network to the remote network, or the internet between those networks, or the remote networks bridge, was there a timeout on the talk-group, or the internet from that bridge to the receiver or the repeater itself, faults in any error correction protocols, the RF link, the receiver itself… Was the time-slot busy for a moment? Was the repeater sending it’s CW-ID and unable to play that stream for a moment? Any and all of those play a role.