One of the big advantages of Allstar is the ability to connect any number of groups or individuals together at will. This generally solves a lot of the political problems which exist in other voip systems like IRLP where reflectors are "owned" by an individual and become like repeaters where not everyone is always welcome and constraints are put on use. You have two choices, connect to a single other node or a reflector.

But Allstar's ability to allow infinite connections can also lead to problems. There seems to be a mentality among a few that the more nodes we can connect together the better. Some people like pileups, the WAN system is an example. For day to day use I am not sure what "wide area" buys you. I prefer a group of people that generally know each other with a few others popping in from time to time. If you like this approach then start your own mini hub and get your friends or other local nodes to connect to one place and as time goes on your will establish a group. The nodes could be local to you or anywhere in the world. Once people realize it is a nice place to meet it will grow. It you don't generally advertise it you won't get a lot of additional connections beyond the group you establish.

In the Philadelphia area we have established a nice local group of nodes which cover a fairly large area and since a prime vacation area for Philly residents is the Jersey shore we cover that area also. In addition there are several out of state nodes that connect in. There are also many nets that take place daily. The Alaska Morning Net is an example. We carry that one day a week for an hour but it is your option how you would connect to other places. Net connections could be setup to connect automatically at a designated time. I have been giving talks to local clubs and just about all the nodes connected to my Philly hub are new within the last year. Business has picked up especially with the advent of the BBB. Maybe you can get more users online in your area.

If you take this approach after awhile most everyone knows each other and it becomes a nice group, somewhat like a club repeater would operate. Educate you users to NOT connect the local hub to the WAN system or any other large network. We had a problem with that for awhile but once the users understand this is not IRLP and you can connect to multiple places they disconnect from the wide networks before connecting to the local hub.
  
73 Doug
WA3DSP
http://www.crompton.com/hamradio


Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2015 09:00:13 -0700
From: electricity440@gmail.com
To: app_rpt-users@ohnosec.org
Subject: [App_rpt-users] Wide area traffic tradeoff

The win system and the wan system are both great systems because of the sheer coverage, but during pileups, it might be hard to say hi to your friend across the country. And then theres so many random keyups like on the WIN system for example. On thanksgiving, I there was like 100 short keyups in a row without ID. 

What is the best compromise between a wide coverage, and the amount of traffic on the system?

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