APRS is a registered trademark of APRS Software and Bob Bruninga, WB4APR.
Since 1997, the APRS Internet System has been collecting APRS data from around the world. The purpose behind this system was to link all the various local RF networks into a single real-time wide area network. The system has been successful beyond my wildest dreams, with thousands of simultaneous users and tens of thousands of stations reporting, the system handles more than two million packets a day. While the original design for this system stored a single position and weather report for each station, there was no provision for any longer-term storage of the data.
The findU system adresses this shortcoming. Each incoming packet is parsed by a Perl script and stored in a MySQL database, currently occupying over 400 GB. Perl CGI's are used to access the database and dynamically generate web pages. Just like the APRS Internet System, findU has grown beyond my wildest dreams (maybe I hust need to drawm bigger). It presently servers about 1.5 million dynamic pages a day.
This web site uses a loaded Dell 12 core Xeon PowerEdge R520 server with 32 GB RAM and 6x600GB 15k SAS drives in hardware RAID 10. The computer is hosted at a colocation site in Pennsylvania, with a similar live backup server hosted in Oklahoma.
email questions and comments to Steve Dimse steve@dimse.com.