This is a direct copy from the WXQC mailing list. I hope it sheds some more light on the latest CWOP problems.
Jim Robinson, K5PNV
AS158
At 03:26 PM 9/27/2012, Ted Lum wrote:
>CWOP is a cooperative enterprise. Many people work together to make
>this happen.
>
>However, each piece of it is independently owned and operated by
>someone who operates with autonomy. I monitor it, but I don't own a
>single piece of it and I have absolutely no control over it. The
>best I can do is communicate with a responsible party. In the case
>of DNS, one person is able to configure it or give specific
>instructions for its configuration.
>
>CWOP is unfunded. Everything is basically donated; time, hardware,
>facilities, support, management, etc., etc., findu does accept
>monetary user donations but findu is much bigger than just CWOP, and
>CWOP is bigger than any one person, no one person could afford the
>cost of buying and centrally controlling the whole thing, so, each
>person controls their own donation.
>
>The system is designed to be fault tolerant. It's geographic
>diversity and multiple message delivery points allows it to stay at
>100% functionality even when the network is degraded. This however
>requires the cooperation of the clients. The clients must recognize
>that it is a distributed network and that it must be treated as
>such. DNS hands out lists of servers and if the client behaves as it
>should the loss of even multiple servers should be 100% transparent.
>Right now the network is geographically degraded, some of the
>capacity that has been available is in transition. The DNS list
>could arguably be considered degraded since we know some of the
>destination IPs on it are never coming back. Still, properly
>designed clients right now are 100% functional due to their fault
>tolerant design.
>
>We are not without desire to improve upon reliability, diversity,
>and capacity. I'm prepared to donate managed instances on amazon to
>increase fault tolerance and increase capacity. Others have offered
>as well. There is a broader goal to further improve things and even
>try and secure some funding. Meanwhile no ones asks for anything
>from users besides their understanding.
>
>CWOP isn't going anywhere. Sure one person might decide to stop
>donating, but the rest of us will go on. At present CWOP is the
>single largest contributor to MADIS. That's only possible through
>the generosity and dedication of a select few, as well as the
>thousands of users that fund and maintain the stations they use to
>contribute, who by the way, collectively, have literally spent
>millions of dollars on hardware. CWOP is a hobby of over 8,000 people.
>
>On 9/27/2012 2:29 PM, Paul wrote:
