Configuring KISS-over-TCP Ports

KISS TNCs can be accessed over a TCP/IP connection. This port type supports such connections; however, it assumes that the other software providing the TCP/IP server socket will handle all issues of ensuring the TNC (software or hardware) is in KISS mode over the socket connection, or that the user will have pre-configured the TNC is KISS mode (or used a KISS-only TNC) prior to starting YAAC.

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

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 KISS TNC service on them. If you choose Host entry, the next two options will be:
  • the IP address of the host providing the KISS-over-TCP service; if left blank, this means the same computer as YAAC is running on.
  • The port number for the KISS-over-TCP service, as specified by the application you are using for KISS-over-TCP. Some port numbers to try are:

    Port number	Application
    8001	default KISS port for AGWPE and DireWolf
    7342	default TCP KISS port for Fldigi

    If you are using a reverse-Telnet TCP/IP-to-RS232 adapter to connect to a hardware TNC, use the TCP/IP port number specified in the adapter's documentation for the serial port in use.

  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 _kiss._tcp services on your local network. Currently, only DireWolf is known to be able to register itself with your local network's service discovery servers, although you could manually register with service discovery a reverse-Telnet terminal server connected to a hardware TNC. 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.

• The KISS device ID to use for sending and receiving data on this port. Unless you are using the antique wiring for connecting multiple TNCs to a single hardware serial port, or are using a modern software TNC (such as AGWPE or DireWolf) that supports multiple simultaneous radio ports, this should be left at zero.
• 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.
• Whether your TNC is a Kenwood radio with built-in TNC that may react to certain character sequences as commands from Kenwood's Memory Control Progran (MCP) that would misconfigure the radio. Unless you are using a Kenwood radio's built-in TNC, this should be unchecked.
• 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 TNC. 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 a TNC port is specified by checking the corresponding checkboxes. Note that YAAC will support receiving all protocols through one TNC 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 timeslot at some offset after the beginning of a repeating interval, and 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 KISS-over-TCP service providing software is running on the target host before you click OK. At that time, YAAC will begin using the KISS protocol over the TCP/IP socket connection as a communications proxy.

Should the remote TNC you have connected to actually be an instance of W1HKJ's FLDIGI program, invoking the configuration window when the connection is established will display additional information:

To the right will be displayed a list of all the FLDIGI OpModes (or modems) that the attached instance of FLDIGI supports in KISS mode (i.e., capable of sending 8-bit binary data packets) with FLDIGI's currently selected mode also selected on the list. Clicking on an entry in the list will command FLDIGI to switch to that OpMode.

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

where serverhostname is the domain name or numeric IP address of the KISS-over-TCP server instance you wish to connect to, such as 127.0.0.1, portNumber is the TCP port number of the KISS-over-TCP server (8001 if accessing DireWolf, other values for other servers), the extra comma after callsign is to skip the unused passcode field, 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.