Calculating Net/Rom route quality

Once you start building packet nodes, you may be faced with the question of how to setup the routing quality between them. This may be your node and then a node of a neighbor, or they may be both your nodes. We aim to give examples of real world routing with both TheNet (X1J4/Plus) as well as G8BPQ.

Node A to Node B

For this example, we will assume there are two single port nodes running on the same frequency. The alias/callsigns are:

NODEA:KB8UVN-1 NODEB:KB8UVN-2

Both sides have locked routes of a quality 200 to one another. You can check the nodes tables on node A with the "n" command.

n
NODEA:KB8UVN-1} Nodes:
NODEB:KB8UVN-2

Next, you can list the nodes routing table with the "r" command (or "nr" with most *NOS systems).

For BPQ, this is

r
NODEA:KB8UVN-1} Routes:
> KB8UVN-2 200 1!

The leading > indicates the route is presently active, followed by the neighbor callsign, quality and destination nodes.

For TheNet, this is

r
NODEA:KB8UVN-1} Routes:
> 0 NODEB:KB8UVN-2 200 1 !

The leading > also indicates the route is presently active, followed by the port (0 = RF, 1 = RS-232/Diode Matrix), neighbor alias:callsign, quality, destination nodes.

Lastly, you can see available routes for a target node with the "n nodename" command.

For BPQ, this is

n nodeb
NODEA:KB8UVN-1} Routes to: NODEB:KB8UVN-2
> 200 6 1 KB8UVN-2

The leading > indicates the route is presently active, followed by the obsolence counter, port number and neighbor callsign.

For TheNet, this is

n nodeb
NODEA:KB8UVN-1} Routes to: NODEB:KB8UVN-2
> 200 5 0 NODEB:KB8UVN-2

The leading > indicates the route is presently active, followed by the quality, obsolence counter, port (0 = RF, 1 = RS-232/Diode Matrix) and lastly neighbor alias:callsign.

The route calculation here is straight forward:

RouteQuality/256 * 256 = Node Quality

Plugging in the above values, this will be:

200/256 * 256 = 200 or a route quality of 200.