Maestro works OK remotely, SSDR not so much

KD0RC

I just helped a friend locate his 6400 to a ranch with wide open spaces and low noise.

When we connect his Maestro via SmartLink, it works well and the link reports Good to Very Good most of the time. The audio is clear with few dropouts. So far, so good...

When either of us connect our PCs with SmartSDR via SmartLink, we get lots of dropouts even though the network shows Good to Very Good. The net result is very broken audio that sounds like a loose connection.

I did a Low Bandwidth connection and set the Waterfall Rate to 1 and the Frame Rate to 1, but the problem persists.

My assumption is that the network at the ranch has a problem, but if that were the case, why does the Maestro work so well?

So any thoughts on what might be wrong, and what can be done about it?

Mike-VA3MW

Len,

Do a test for MTU values. Too high an MTU value could cause packet fragmentation.

https://blog.purestorage.com/purely-informational/what-is-mtu-size-and-how-do-you-calculate-it/#:~:text=Determine%20the%20optimal%20maximum%20transmission%20unit%20size%3A%20To%20find%20the,packet_size%3E%20%E2%80%9D.

KD0RC

Thanks Mike, I will do that when I get home later today. I did that exercise on my home station a couple of years ago. I totally forgot about it for this situation!

KD0RC

We got to the bottom of it. The rancher replaced a poorly performing bridge from the router in the house to the switch in the shop where the radio is. That got rid of just about all of the stuttering. I played with different MTU values, but 1452 seems to be the right number.

At the moment, the network is loaded down with multiple cameras used to help manage the livestock. I believe this is the primary contributor to the remaining issue of dropped packets. While the dropped packets are a little annoying, the system is completely usable and the network quality is mostly Excellent with very occasional drops to Very Good.

On the transmit side, my first call to an aero-mobile station flying over Florida broke the pile-up and I got a good signal report. A little more testing should confirm that the drop-outs are only on the receive side (I hope...).