On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 16:48:50 -0400, Larry wrote:

http://www.aisliverpool.org.uk/shows...mmsi=234983000

The S/V "Ben My Chree", a 12,504 gt Ro-Ro/Passenger vessel is, to quote
their AIS beacon "underway by SAIL" headed for Heysham. She's making over
19 knots!

What an interesting site.

From the site's 'maps' page, I clicked through to this map:
http://www.aisliverpool.org.uk/currentmap.php?map=33
but at the time of posting, there are no ships shown on it. Is that
because there are no ships there at the moment, or because the site is
(obviously) Liverpool oriented, and this map is outside the area they
want to cover?


______________
best wishes,
Ron

Ronnie wrote:
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 16:48:50 -0400, Larry wrote:

http://www.aisliverpool.org.uk/shows...mmsi=234983000

The S/V "Ben My Chree", a 12,504 gt Ro-Ro/Passenger vessel is, to quote
their AIS beacon "underway by SAIL" headed for Heysham. She's making over
19 knots!

What an interesting site.

From the site's 'maps' page, I clicked through to this map:
http://www.aisliverpool.org.uk/currentmap.php?map=33
but at the time of posting, there are no ships shown on it. Is that
because there are no ships there at the moment, or because the site is
(obviously) Liverpool oriented, and this map is outside the area they
want to cover?

There's plenty going on now, 11 vessels, so I imagine the site was down.

(Ronnie) wrote in :

From the site's 'maps' page, I clicked through to this map:
http://www.aisliverpool.org.uk/currentmap.php?map=33
but at the time of posting, there are no ships shown on it. Is that
because there are no ships there at the moment, or because the site is
(obviously) Liverpool oriented, and this map is outside the area they
want to cover?




I'm assuming he has a very high receiving antenna on a big tower near
Liverpool that can receive data from as far away as Ireland as I see
targets from over on that side. Maybe he has multiple receivers around the
Irish Sea linked to it, but I'm not sure.

I'd bet, watching the coverage for quite a while, now, there are no ships
broadcasting AIS from where you want to look. The coverage, the linked
realtime pictures taken when the AIS target passes in front of his
recording camera equipment stored on the website....it's the best AIS
coverage on the planet...even much better than the subscription ripoff
artists which only give limited coverage.

What a great donation he is making to the marine community, worldwide.

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

Donald Lancaster wrote in news:OW0Kg.12228$r61.7769
@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk:

There's plenty going on now, 11 vessels, so I imagine the site was down.


Or your path to the site might have been interrupted. Boot the "command
prompt" (dare we say DOS 5.2?) and enter:

ping aisliverpool.org.uk

and see if you can ping the server. If it never makes it there, that's why
you don't have data. Mine looks like:

C:\ping aisliverpool.org.uk

Pinging aisliverpool.org.uk [194.154.164.82] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 194.154.164.82: bytes=32 time=159ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.154.164.82: bytes=32 time=141ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.154.164.82: bytes=32 time=147ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.154.164.82: bytes=32 time=171ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 194.154.164.82:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 141ms, Maximum = 171ms, Average = 154ms

(I would have suggested tracert, the traceroute command, but many ISPs,
including mine, no longer allow traceroutes from their users because of
abuses we just can't seem to keep from doing.)

If, when the site is unreachable...and you don't get the IP above...it
means your ISP's DNS lookup server isn't taking the domain name and
resolving it to an IP. The internet has no idea where aisliverpool.org.uk
is located. You can also use http://194.154.164.82/ and try it directly,
but the other pages you want to go to all require DNS resolving to IP to
find so that won't help much. DNS failures are awful on some ISP systems.

You can put in your own DNS to your networking setup in Windoze, if you
like. The bigshot server is 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 for the whole internet.
It's open and anyone can use it to resolve addresses, bypassing the hosed
DNS at your cheapskate ISP...(c;

From my ping, I'd say it's about 150ms from Charleston, SC, to Atlanta, GA
to England and on to Liverpool......and back. Not bad at the speed of
light!

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

On Fri, 01 Sep 2006 18:07:09 -0400, Larry wrote:

Donald Lancaster wrote in news:OW0Kg.12228$r61.7769
:

There's plenty going on now, 11 vessels, so I imagine the site was down.


Or your path to the site might have been interrupted.

[snip interesting DNS story]

It is showing some ships, now, thanks. I did get the map outline,
just no ships. Presumably the map outline and the ship display are on
the same server?

I RTFM, after posting, of course :-) and the site designer explains
that he receives signals up to, say, 35 miles away. In fact the North
Channel is probably further than 35 miles from Liverpool, so some AIS
signals are reaching his system from longer away than his FAQ
suggests. But the site shows nothing on the 'atlantic gateway' along
the top of the Irish coast, or up towards the Minch. Presumably,
those areas are well beyond his system's capability.

I wonder if there is any way for the site to develop to display all
the traffic in the map areas that the site already contains? I'm
interested because we live on the coast, and notice that many of the
ships passing are bound for the North Channel, on their way to
wherever they are going.

And I've taken note of that DNS suggestion, thanks for that.


______________
best wishes,
Ron

Larry wrote:
(Ronnie) wrote in :

From the site's 'maps' page, I clicked through to this map:
http://www.aisliverpool.org.uk/currentmap.php?map=33
but at the time of posting, there are no ships shown on it. Is that
because there are no ships there at the moment, or because the site
is (obviously) Liverpool oriented, and this map is outside the area
they want to cover?




I'm assuming he has a very high receiving antenna on a big tower near
Liverpool that can receive data from as far away as Ireland as I see
targets from over on that side. Maybe he has multiple receivers
around the Irish Sea linked to it, but I'm not sure.

I'd bet, watching the coverage for quite a while, now, there are no
ships broadcasting AIS from where you want to look. The coverage,
the linked realtime pictures taken when the AIS target passes in
front of his recording camera equipment stored on the website....it's
the best AIS coverage on the planet...even much better than the
subscription ripoff artists which only give limited coverage.

What a great donation he is making to the marine community, worldwide.

I have e-mailed a sailing friend who lives near Liverpool (a Liverpudlian!)
to see if he is aware of the site and if so can he describe the receiver(s)
and their height etc.

Dennis.

(Ronnie) wrote in :

It is showing some ships, now, thanks. I did get the map outline,
just no ships. Presumably the map outline and the ship display are on
the same server?



Not necessarily. He could be storing the static parts of the webpage on a
remote server run by a whole different company, which is cheaper, then the
realtime data even on a small server onsite or in someone's home. It would
make sense.

There's no limit where he could store static parts of the webpages. They
come up here much faster than the actual data does, which supports this
hypothesis.

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

"Dennis Pogson" wrote in
:

I have e-mailed a sailing friend who lives near Liverpool (a
Liverpudlian!) to see if he is aware of the site and if so can he
describe the receiver(s) and their height etc.

Dennis.



He should contact the webmaster(s) and get a tour, or at least tell thim
how much we all appreciate the free access. This site has got to cost
quite a bit of money that must come from somewhere.

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.