Deep Dive SmartLink Server Infrastructure

Wolfgang

Hi All - I would like to know more about the Flexradio SmartLink Server infrastructure. How does this server infrastructure looks like? Where are the server physically located? What type of servers?
I ask this questions because of the following. I operate my Flex 6500 remote on a Swiss moutain 1'660m with an Internet-Connection with 25 MBit/s Downlink and 4.5 MBit/s Uplink. Sometimes the signal indicator next to the SmartLink Text shows "red" or "yellow". I'm not sure, is this because of our Internet-Connection or the load of the SmartLink Server Infrastructure?
73 de HB9RYZ, Wolfgang www.hb9ryz.ch

Jon_KF2E

Mark Erbaugh

I believe the Smartlink servers only establish the initial connection to the Flex. Once the radio and client have connected, the communication is direct, IP address to IP address.

I have seen red or yellow signal indications with the computer and Flex both hardwired to the same physical network switch.

Mike-VA3MW

Mark Earle

Asher - K0AU

Managed to find a used Maestro and got it working pretty quickly from my remote site.

 

Couple curiosities: My Maestro connects to the home site using SmartLink. Other connectivity between the sites is over a site-to-site VPN.

 

The Maestro reports +/- 120ms round trip latency, while a VPN ping to the radio’s IP address reports +/- 50ms latency.  I don’t have any way to trace the SmartLink network path, but I’d be surprised if it’s radically different from the VPN tunnel path, so any clues on why latency reports are so different? Is SmartLink measuring latency through more of the network stack?

 

Other curiosity is intermittent disconnects. I have no control over network path delays and congestion. My local path delays are on the order of milliseconds. There must be a spec on what triggers a disconnect – is it k of n dropped packets? Out of order reception?  And curious why SmartLink doesn’t seem to have a session layer to restore lost transport connections. Why does SmartLink require manual intervention to reconnect? (I’m running V2.6.1.)

 

I can’t tell if the Maestro connection is more fragile than an SSDR SmartLink connection from my computer.

 

I tend to leave radios running overnight with an FT8 decode feeding into PSKReporter, and it would be nice if it stayed up consistently.

 

Overall: it’s remarkable it works as well as it does, but it seems rather fragile and I’m not sure I’d set up my main use case to be remote over SmartLink.