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16 <H2><A NAME="s1">1.</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1">Routing and Filtering</A></H2>
18 <H2><A NAME="ss1.1">1.1</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.1">Introduction</A>
21 <P>From DXSpider version 1.48, major changes were introduced to the way
22 node connections are treated. This is part of an ongoing process to
23 remove problems with loops and to enable talk and other functions to
24 propagate across the whole of the worldwide cluster network. In fact,
25 in a Spider network, it would be useful, perhaps even necessary to
26 have loops. This would give real resilience to the network, meaning
27 that if a link dropped, the information flow would simply come in and
28 go out via a different route. Of course, we do not have a complete
29 network of Spider nodes, there are other programs out there. Some of
30 these do not have any protection from loops. Certainly AK1A does not
31 handle loops well at all. It is therefore necessary to have some form
32 of protection for these nodes.</P>
34 <P>In fact DXSpider has had a simple system for some time which is called
35 <I>isolation</I>. This is similar to what in other systems such as
36 <B>clx</B>, is called <I>passive mode</I>. A more detailed explanation
37 of <I>isolation</I> is given further below. This system is still available
38 and, for simple networks, is probably all that you need.</P>
40 <P>The new functionality introduced in version 1.48 allows filtering the node
41 and user protocol frames on a "per interface" basis. We call this
42 <I>route filtering</I>. This is used <B>instead of</B>
43 <I>isolation</I>. </P>
45 <P>What this really means is that you can control more or less completely
46 which user and node management PC protocol frames pass to each of your
47 partner nodes. You can also limit what comes into your node from your
48 partners. It is even possible to control the settings that your partner
49 node has for the routing information that it sends to you
50 (using the <I>rcmd</I> command).</P>
52 <H2><A NAME="ss1.2">1.2</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.2">Route Filters</A>
55 <P>Initially when route filters were being tested we generated a
56 "default" filter. Unfortunately it quickly became apparent that this
57 might suit the UK cluster network but didn't really fit anybody else.
58 However using a default filter is an appropriate thing to do. How, is
59 explained further on.</P>
61 <P>The first thing that you must do is determine whether you need to use
62 route filtering <B>at all</B>. If you are a "normal" node with two or
63 three partners and you arranged in an "official" non-looping tree type
64 network, then <B>you do not need to do route filtering</B> and you will
65 feel a lot better for not getting involved. If you are successfully using
66 <I>isolation</I> then you also probably don't need to use route filtering.</P>
68 <P>To put it simply, you should not mix Isolation and Route Filtering. It
69 will work, of sorts, but you will not get the expected results. If you
70 are using Isolation sucessfully at the moment, do not get involved in
71 Route Filtering unless you have a good supply of aspirin! Once you have
72 started down the road of Route Filtering, do not use Isolation either.
73 Use one or the other, not both.</P>
75 <P>You will only require this functionality if you are "well-connected". What
76 that means is that you are connected to several different parts of (say)
77 the EU cluster and, at the same time, also connected to two or three places
78 in the US which, in turn are connected back to the EU. This is called a
79 "loop" and if you are seriously looped then you need filtering.</P>
81 <P>I should at this stage give a little bit of background on filters. All
82 the filters in Spider work in basically the same way. You can either
83 accept or reject various options in order to create the filter rules
84 you wish to achieve. Some filters are user settable, others can only
85 be altered by the sysop. Route filtering can only be done by the sysop.</P>
88 Anyway, without further discouragement, let me start the process
91 <H2><A NAME="ss1.3">1.3</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.3">The node_default filter</A>
94 <P>All normal systems should have a default routing filter and it should
95 usually be set to send only the normal, unlooped, view of your
96 "national" network. Here in the UK that means nodes from the UK and
97 Eire, in EU it is more complex as the networks there grew up in a more
101 The generic commands are:-</P>
105 reject/route node_default <filter_option>
109 accept/route node_default <filter_option>
113 <P>where filter_option is one of the following ...</P>
117 call <prefixes>
118 call_dxcc <numbers>
119 call_itu <numbers>
120 call_zone <numbers>
121 channel <prefixes>
122 channel_dxcc <numbers>
123 channel_itu <numbers>
124 channel_zone <numbers>
128 <P>Please be careful if you alter this setting, it will affect
129 <B><I>ALL</I></B> your links! Remember, this is a <I>default</I>
130 filter for node connections, not a <I>per link</I> default.</P>
132 <P>For the default routing filter then you have two real choices: either
133 a "national" view or the "safe" option of only your own
134 callsign. Examples of each (for my node: GB7DJK) are:-</P>
138 acc/route node_default call_dxcc 61,38
139 acc/route node_default call gb7djk
143 <P>GB7DJK uses the first of these. The DXCC countries can be obtained from the
144 <I>show/prefix</I> command.</P>
146 <P>The example filters shown control <I>output</I> <B>TO</B> all your
147 partner nodes unless they have a specific filter applied to them (see
150 <P>It is also possible to control the <I>incoming</I> routing
151 information that you are prepared to accept <B>FROM</B> your partner
152 nodes. The reason this is necessary is to make sure that stuff like
153 mail, pings and similar commands a) go down the correct links and b)
154 don't loop around excessively. Again using GB7DJK as an example a typical
155 default input filter would be something like:</P>
159 rej/route node_default input call_dxcc 61,38 and not channel_dxcc 61,38
163 <P>What this does is accept node and user information for our national
164 network from nodes that are in our national network, but rejects such
165 information from anyone else. Although it doesn't explicitly say so,
166 by implication, any other node information (not from the UK and Eire)
169 <P>As I imagine it will take a little while to get one's head around all of
170 this you can study the effect of any rules that you try by watching the
171 debug output after having done:-</P>
179 <P>After you have got tired of that, to put it back the way it was:-</P>
188 <H2><A NAME="ss1.4">1.4</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.4">General route filtering</A>
191 <P>Exactly the same rules apply for general route filtering. You would
192 use either an accept filter or a reject filter like this ...</P>
196 reject/route <node_call> <filter_option>
200 accept/route <node_call> <filter_option>
205 <P>Here are some examples of route filters ...</P>
209 rej/route gb7djk call_dxcc 61,38 (send everything except UK+EIRE nodes)
210 rej/route all (equiv to [very] restricted mode)
211 acc/route gb7djk call_dxcc 61,38 (send only UK+EIRE nodes)
212 acc/route gb7djk call gb7djk (equiv to SET/ISOLATE)
216 <P>In practice you will either be opening the default filter out for a
217 partner by defining a specific filter for that callsign:-</P>
222 acc/route gb7baa input all
226 <P>or restricting it quite a lot, in fact making it very nearly like an
227 <I>isolated</I> node, like this:-</P>
231 acc/route pi4ehv-8 call gb7djk
232 rej/route pi4ehv-8 input call_dxcc 61,38
236 <P>This last example takes everything except UK and Eire from PI4EHV-8
237 but only sends him my local configuration (just a PC19 for GB7DJK and
238 PC16s for my local users).</P>
240 <P>It is possible to write <B>much</B> more complex rules, there are up
241 to 10 accept/reject pairs per callsign per filter. For more information
242 see the next section. </P>
245 <H2><A NAME="ss1.5">1.5</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.5">General filter rules</A>
248 <P>Upto v1.44 it was not possible for the user to set their own filters. From
249 v1.45 though that has all changed. It is now possible to set filters for just
250 about anything you wish. If you have just updated from an older version of
251 DXSpider you will need to update your new filters. You do not need to do
252 anything with your old filters, they will be renamed as you update.</P>
254 <P>There are 3 basic commands involved in setting and manipulating filters. These
255 are <EM>accept</EM>, <EM>reject</EM> and <EM>clear</EM>. First we will look
256 generally at filtering. There are a number of things you can filter in the
257 DXSpider system. They all use the same general mechanism.</P>
259 <P>In general terms you can create a "reject" or an "accept" filter which can have
260 up to 10 lines in it. You do this using, for example ... </P>
270 <P>where ..... are the specific commands for that type of filter. There are filters
271 for spots, wwv, announce, wcy and (for sysops) connects. See each different
272 accept or reject command reference for more details.</P>
273 <P>There is also a command to clear out one or more lines in a filter. They are ...</P>
282 <P>There is clear/xxxx command for each type of filter.</P>
284 <P>and you can check that your filters have worked by the command ... </P>
294 <P>For now we are going to use spots for the examples, but you can apply the same
295 principles to all types of filter.</P>
297 <H2><A NAME="ss1.6">1.6</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.6">Types of filter</A>
300 <P>There are two main types of filter, <EM>accept</EM> or <EM>reject</EM>. You
301 can use either to achieve the result you want dependent on your own preference
302 and which is more simple to do. It is pointless writing 8 lines of reject
303 filters when 1 accept filter would do the same thing! Each filter has 10
304 lines (of any length) which are tried in order. If a line matches then the
305 action you have specified is taken (ie reject means ignore it and accept
308 <P>If you specify reject filters, then any lines that arrive that match the filter
309 will be dumped but all else will be accepted. If you use an accept filter,
310 then ONLY the lines in the filter will be accepted and all else will be dumped.
311 For example if you have a single line <EM>accept</EM> filter ...</P>
315 accept/spots on vhf and (by_zone 14,15,16 or call_zone 14,15,16)
319 <P>then you will <EM>ONLY</EM> get VHF spots <EM>from</EM> or <EM>to</EM> CQ zones
322 <P>If you set a reject filter like this ...</P>
326 reject/spots on hf/cw
330 <P>Then you will get everything <EM>EXCEPT</EM> HF CW spots. You could make this
331 single filter even more flexible. For example, if you are interested in IOTA
332 and will work it even on CW even though normally you are not interested in
333 CW, then you could say ...</P>
337 reject/spots on hf/cw and not info iota
341 <P>But in that case you might only be interested in iota and say:-</P>
345 accept/spots not on hf/cw or info iota
349 <P>which achieves exactly the same thing. You should choose one or the other
350 until you are comfortable with the way it works. You can mix them if you
351 wish (actually you can have an accept AND a reject on the same line) but
352 don't attempt this until you are sure you know what you are doing!</P>
354 <P>You can arrange your filter lines into logical units, either for your own
355 understanding or simply convenience. Here is an example ...</P>
359 reject/spots 1 on hf/cw
360 reject/spots 2 on 50000/1400000 not (by_zone 14,15,16 or call_zone 14,15,16)
364 <P>What this does is to ignore all HF CW spots and also rejects any spots on VHF
365 which don't either originate or spot someone in Europe. </P>
367 <P>This is an example where you would use a line number (1 and 2 in this case), if
368 you leave the digit out, the system assumes '1'. Digits '0'-'9' are available.
369 This make it easier to see just what filters you have set. It also makes it
370 more simple to remove individual filters, during a contest for example.</P>
372 <P>You will notice in the above example that the second line has brackets. Look
373 at the line logically. You can see there are 2 separate sections to it. We
374 are saying reject spots that are VHF or above <EM>APART</EM> from those in
375 zones 14, 15 and 16 (either spotted there or originated there). If you did
376 not have the brackets to separate the 2 sections, then Spider would read it
377 logically from the front and see a different expression entirely ...</P>
381 (on 50000/1400000 and by_zone 14,15,16) or call_zone 14,15,16
385 <P>The simple way to remember this is, if you use OR - use brackets. Whilst we are
386 here CASE is not important. 'And BY_Zone' is just the same as 'and by_zone'.</P>
387 <P>As mentioned earlier, setting several filters can be more flexible than
388 simply setting one complex one. Doing it in this way means that if you want
389 to alter your filter you can just redefine or remove one or more lines of it or
390 one line. For example ...</P>
394 reject/spots 1 on hf/ssb
398 <P>would redefine our earlier example, or </P>
406 <P>To remove all the filter lines in the spot filter ...</P>
415 <H2><A NAME="ss1.7">1.7</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.7">Filter options</A>
418 <P>You can filter in several different ways. The options are listed in the
419 various helpfiles for accept, reject and filter.</P>
421 <H2><A NAME="ss1.8">1.8</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.8">Default filters</A>
424 <P>Sometimes all that is needed is a general rule for node connects. This can
425 be done with a node_default filter. This rule will always be followed, even
426 if the link is isolated, unless another filter is set specifically. Default
427 rules can be set for nodes and users. They can be set for spots, announces,
428 WWV and WCY. They can also be used for hops. An example might look like
433 accept/spot node_default by_zone 14,15,16,20,33
434 set/hops node_default spot 50
438 <P>This filter is for spots only, you could set others for announce, WWV and WCY.
439 This filter would work for ALL nodes unless a specific filter is written to
440 override it for a particular node. You can also set a user_default should
441 you require. It is important to note that default filters should be
442 considered to be "connected". By this I mean that should you override the
443 default filter for spots, you need to add a rule for the hops for spots also.</P>
445 <H2><A NAME="ss1.9">1.9</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.9">Advanced filtering</A>
448 <P>Once you are happy with the results you get, you may like to experiment. </P>
450 <P>The previous example that filters hf/cw spots and accepts vhf/uhf spots from EU
451 can be written with a mixed filter, for example ... </P>
457 acc/spot 2 on 50000/1400000 and (by_zone 14,15,16 or call_zone 14,15,16)
461 <P>Note that the first filter has not been specified with a number. This will
462 automatically be assumed to be number 1. In this case, we have said <EM>reject all
463 HF spots in the CW section of the bands but accept all others at HF. Also
464 accept anything in VHF and above spotted in or by operators in the zones
465 14, 15 and 16</EM>. Each filter slot actually has a 'reject' slot and
466 an 'accept' slot. The reject slot is executed BEFORE the accept slot.</P>
468 <P>It was mentioned earlier that after a reject test that doesn't match, the default
469 for following tests is 'accept', the reverse is true for 'accept'. In the example
470 what happens is that the reject is executed first, any non hf/cw spot is passed
471 to the accept line, which lets through everything else on HF. The next filter line
472 lets through just VHF/UHF spots from EU.</P>
474 <H2><A NAME="ss1.10">1.10</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.10">Basic hop control</A>
477 <P>In /spider/data you will find a file called hop_table.pl. This is the file
478 that controls your hop count settings. It has a set of default hops on the
479 various PC frames and also a set for each node you want to alter the hops for.
480 You may be happy with the default settings of course, but this powerful tool
481 can help to protect and improve the network. The file will look something
487 # hop table construction
492 # default hopcount to use
495 # some variable hop counts based on message type
506 # the per node hop control thingy
539 <P>Each set of hops is contained within a pair of curly braces and contains a
540 series of PC frame types. PC11 for example is a DX spot. The figures here
541 are not exhaustive but should give you a good idea of how the file works.</P>
543 <P>SHould any of the nodecalls include an ssid, it is important to wrap the
544 whole call in single quotes, like this ...</P>
559 <P>If you do not do this, you will get errors and the file will not work as
562 <P>You can alter this file at any time, including whilst the cluster is running.
563 If you alter the file during runtime, the command <EM>load/hops</EM> will
564 bring your changes into effect.</P>
566 <H2><A NAME="ss1.11">1.11</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.11">Hop Control on Specific Nodes</A>
569 <P>You can set a callsign specific hop count for any of the standard filter
574 set/hops gb7djk spot 4
575 set/hops node_default route 10
576 set/hops gb7baa wcy 5
580 <P>all work on their specific area of the protocol.</P>
582 <P>The <EM>set/hops</EM> command overrides any hops that you have set otherwise.</P>
584 <P>You can show what hops have been set using the <EM>show/hops</EM> command.</P>
586 <H2><A NAME="ss1.12">1.12</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.12">Isolating networks</A>
589 <P>It is possible to isolate networks from each other on a "gateway" node using the
590 <EM>set/isolate <node_call></EM> command.</P>
592 <P>The effect of this is to partition an isolated network completely from another
593 node connected to your node. Your node will appear on and otherwise behave
594 normally on every network to which you are connected, but data from an isolated
595 network will not cross onto any other network or vice versa. However all the
596 spot, announce and WWV traffic and personal messages will still be handled
597 locally (because you are a real node on all connected networks), that is locally
598 connected users will appear on all networks and will be able to access and
599 receive information from all networks transparently. All routed messages will
600 be sent as normal, so if a user on one network knows that you are a gateway for
601 another network, he can still still send a talk/announce etc message via your
602 node and it will be routed across.</P>
604 <P>If you use isolate on a node connection you will continue to receive
605 all information from the isolated partner, however you will not pass
606 any information back to the isolated node. There are times when you
607 would like to forward only spots across a link (maybe during a contest
608 for example). To do this, isolate the node in the normal way and use
609 an <EM>acc/spot >call< all</EM> filter to override the isolate. </P>
611 <H2><A NAME="ss1.13">1.13</A> <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1.13">A DXSpider Filtering Tutorial</A>
614 <P>There is now an excellent primer/tutorial on filtering written by Jim
615 Samuels, W3BG with an introduction by Dave Hawes N3RD that I strongly
616 suggest you read. You can read it here
617 <A HREF="filtering_en.html">The DXSpider User Filtering Primer</A></P>
620 <A HREF="adminmanual_en-2.html">Next</A>
622 <A HREF="adminmanual_en.html#toc1">Contents</A>
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