Configuring AGWPE Ports

SV2AGW's AGW Packet Engine provides a multiple-TNC interface supporting both physical hardware TNCs and a software "soundmodem" working through the PC's sound card and an associated port used for PTT. Any number of the ports defined on the local AGWPE server can be accessed as YAAC ports.

To add a new AGWPE port, click the Add button on the Configure Ports tab. The port editing dialog will appear. Set the port type to AGWPE.

YAAC's AGWPE configuration panel screenshot

The other parameters you will need to specify for the port are:

Whether you are going to provide the network connection information for the remote host manually, or use Service Discovery (if available) to locate available hosts with AGWPE service on them. If you choose Host entry, the next two options will be:
- the IP address of the host running the AGWPE server; if left blank, this means the same computer as YAAC is running on. If the AGWPE server is accessed on a non-standard TCP port number (default is port 8000), the TCP port number can also be specified. The port for the AGWPE server can be seen in the AGWPE Interface Setup dialog as shown below; other emulating programs will have different configuration interfaces.
If you choose Service Discovery, the panel will change to look like this:

and your next few configuration fields will be a drop-down list of the names of the discovered services on your network (which may be empty). YAAC searches for _agwpe._tcp services on your local network. None of the AGWPE emulating APRS applications are known to be able to register themselves with your local network's service discovery servers, although you could manually register them with service discovery. For example, the following direwolf.service file could be placed in the /etc/avahi/services directory on your DireWolf server to make DireWolf's AGWPE port visible:
```
<service-group>
    <name replace-wildcards="yes">Dire Wolf AGWPE on %h</name>
    <service protocol="ipv4">
        <type>_agwpe._tcp</type>
        <port>8000</port>
    </service>
<service-group>
```
Also note that Service Discovery in YAAC only works on computers running the Avahi daemon for mDNS and DNS-SD service (typically, Linux systems). It does not yet have access to the Apple Bonjour™ service on Macintosh computers, and it is unknown whether raw mDNS access will work on Microsoft Windows systems.
if accessing the AGWPE server on a different computer than the one running YAAC, you will probably need to specify the username and password configured in the AGWPE server to control access to its services; if accessing a machine-local AGWPE server, you can probably leave these fields blank. This should probably be left blank for AGWPE emulators like DireWolf or LDSPED.
the name of the AGWPE TNC "port" to use, as named through AGWPE's own configuration user interface.
The callsign you will be using to identify your transmissions over this port. This should be your legal government-assigned callsign with an optional numeric SSID suffix from 1 to 15.
Whether or not you want to allow YAAC to make transmissions through the port. If left disabled, you will only be able to monitor APRS traffic through this port. You must specify a callsign to be able to transmit.
Whether the radio on this port is tuned to the HF bands. By default, YAAC assumes usage on the VHF and UHF bands where higher bandwidths are permitted and digipeating is normally used.
The sub-list of aliases that will be digipeated through this port, based on the total list of known aliases defined in the general configuration. If YAAC receives a message with one of the checked digipeat aliases and this port is enabled for transmission, the message will be re-broadcast through the radio on this port. If no aliases are selected, this port will not digipeat. Multiple aliases can be selected. The aliases must also be enabled for digipeating on the configuration dialog's Digipeat tab.
Which of potentially several beacon definitions will be transmitted through this port. If none is checked when the port configuration is saved, the default beacon will be used (and will show up as checked when this configuration panel is next opened). To specify that a beacon should not be sent out this port, a beacon should be selected that is not enabled on the Beacon tab of the expert-mode configuration dialog.
The protocols that can be transmitted through this AGWPE connection. Generally, only one protocol should be used on a given RF channel to avoid confusion of other stations and wasting of bandwidth. Which supported protocols should be transmitted out an AGWPE port is specified by checking the corresponding checkboxes. Note that YAAC will support receiving all protocols through one AGWPE port, recognizing which protocol is in each AX.25 frame by the PID field; this merely restricts which protocols YAAC will send on a port. The "raw AX.25" protocol supports connected-mode packet operation.
Whether transmission through this port should be delayed until an assigned transmit timeslot at some offset after the beginning of a repeating interval, and how long this timeslot is before the next timeslot (presumably assigned to some other station) starts. Note that timeslotting is unadvised unless you are on a channel where all stations are using mutually non-conflicting timeslots on the same slot cycle length. Also, it is preferred to do timeslotting in a TNC rather than in client software like YAAC, because it will be more precisely aligned; YAAC only provides timeslotting capability to support TNCs (hardware or software) that do not natively support timeslotting themselves.
Whether duplicate packets should be coalesced into a single transmission instead of retransmitted. Transmitting a burst of duplicates may be useful for modes like meteor-scatter, where only one or two of a burst of packets may get through, but is otherwise discouraged.

Once you have the settings the way you want them, click OK. Ensure that the TNC is connected to AGWPE before you click OK. At that time, YAAC will begin using AGWPE as a communications proxy.

Other programs for other platforms emulate the functionality of the AGWPE server daemon. These include ldsped (for Linux systems using the kernel AX.25 support), Sivan Toledo 4X6IZ's soundmodem program, DireWolf, and the UZ7HO soundmodem.

If you want to create an AGWPE port on a new installation of YAAC using the -createport option, the port_description is of the format:

AGWPE,portNameOnServer,portNumber,callsign,passcode,transmitEnabled[,digipeatAlias[,...]];serverhostname;;;;;flags

where serverhostname is the domain name or numeric IP address of the AGWPE server instance you wish to connect to, such as 127.0.0.1, or the service instance name if using Service Discovery, portNumber is the TCP port number of the AGWPE server (usually 8000), and portNameOnServer is the name of the specified radio port within the AGWPE server, passcode is the concatenation of your AGW username, the Record Separator control character (\u001E), and your AGW password (this latter field is, as mentioned above, only needed if your AGWPE server enforces authentication for off-host clients), transmitEnabled is either "true" or "false" (without the quotes) depending on whether you want this port able to transmit packets. Any digipeatAlias specified here must also already be specified on the expert-mode configuration dialog's Digipeat tab.