W5GGW's echolink page

Javecho Stuff

I've created a Java based echolink client that you can find at javecho.dev.java.net. This client is intended to allow the Amateur Radio community to more easily use VOIP technologies to solve their own problems. With this software, I hope to create some infrastructure that will allow all of us to use our equipment to its fullest.

Please check it out, and let me know what you think. I'm looking for people who can help me with the development tasks, as well as for ideas of things to add or do differently.

Linksys Router Stuff

The following note appeared on the echolink yahoo group, and many like it have appeared before. 

I can't get my echolink to work ever since I plugged in my router.
192.168.1.1
Forwarding 5198-5199 on both
Triggering:  5198-5199 on both incoming and port range.
(what is application name??? should I put something in there?)
We've done everything the echolink site says to do and still can't 
get it to work!

Using Windows XP.  Someone please help!  My email address is XXXXXXX
Thank you,
KC8JWA
Bev
I believe that the issue here is that DHCP from the router is allocating addresses to the machine dynamically. So, when an entry is placed in the port forwarding configuration of the router, a fixed IP address was added.

When you power cycle the router, it will loose its knowledge of which address it assigned to your computer. It will start over. If your computer was the first to be allocated an address, it may have got 192.168.1.100 the first time. After a power cycle, perhaps another computer was powered up first. It would get 192.168.1.100. Now, you power your computer up to do echolink, and it might get 192.168.1.101.

If the port forwarding says 

Application Name	Port Range	Status	IP Address
echolink		5198	5199	enabled	192.168.1.100
Then it won't work for your machine since you are now 192.168.1.101.

This is the reason why everyone suggests that you use the "Port Triggering" feature of the linksys routers instead. If you put in a record for port triggering that says 

Application Name	Trigger Port Range	Incomming Port Range
echolink		5198	5200		5198	5199
Then any computer that connects to the echolink servers on port 5200, later makes a connection request to another echolink node, no matter what it's IP address, will get sent the incomming traffic for ports 5198 and 5199.

By specifying 5198-5200, you can repair certain problems when your spouse or someone else connects to echolink while you are using it. This also helps with certain test scenarios when you are using two different computers to test a '-L' or '-R' configuration while talking to someone else via echolink who is testing your station for you.

You can connect from either station and get the port mapping enacted for you. And, to switch which station is active without connecting, just reload the station list.