Wow

[troymail]

So odd to see Worcester County and Ocean City listed as a single system after all these years....

Worcester County / Ocean City Trunking System, Snow Hill, Maryland - Scanner Frequencies

 

[emtLarmy15]

Well nothing has changed... They are two completely separate systems that "some" t/g are shared. A person who doesn't know any better would probably just program the OC site expecting to hear everything and they could be sorely disappointed to miss a lot of radio traffic.
It is no different then when FiRST comes online. There will eventually be an ISSI between the three systems but they will still be different.

 

[troymail]

Yes - it's just really strange yo seem them as one - and so long....

 

[guyiv]

I think they should be reseparated since they are maintained separately and they do not share most of their talk groups.

 

[ocguard]

The SHOULD be separated. They are SEPARATE systems that share a handful of common talk groups. The question was posed on this forum a few years back as to whether the systems should be combined in the DB, and it was shot down almost unanimously. This will only serve to confuse those who may not fully understand.

 

[emtLarmy15]

So who asked for them to be combined in the first place???

 

[troymail]

So who asked for them to be combined in the first place???

Only the database admins probably know.

I'm sure I will keep them separate still anyway (manually) because the OC site seems to be getting harder to receive from Berlin (my parents house) so I usually turn OC (now site) off in that area rather than hear all the static.

 

[mikewazowski]

They were combined based on a submission from a member. It indicated that all the talkgroups would be heard on each site.

If you feel they shouldn't be combined, then make a submission asking for them to be separated and reference this thread and the older thread where it was discussed.

 

[wa8pyr]

All,

If the two systems are networked and can share talkgroups across sites (even if it doesn't happen very often), it's considered a single system and will be listed as such in the database.

 

[troymail]

Curious - what tools are available to see/determine the site(ness) of an EDACS system? Or is it just someone who "knows" and decided to share the info?

(I'm interested in the tool not the person)

 

[maus92]

All,

If the two systems are networked and can share talkgroups across sites (even if it doesn't happen very often), it's considered a single system and will be listed as such in the database.

Well, that will be a problem on Maryland's statewide FiRST system when it gets "networked" into several county systems for in-building coverage. IMO, if the systems are separately licensed and administered, they should be considered discrete systems.

 

[ocguard]

All,

If the two systems are networked and can share talkgroups across sites (even if it doesn't happen very often), it's considered a single system and will be listed as such in the database.

If this is the case, I'll get you a list together. I'm sure the DB admin will have a lot of trouble combining networked systems of dislike types. Seems like a bunch of crap to me, decisions made by someone who has never listened to the system and is unfamiliar with the set-up. They are two systems with two controllers, they cannot share one another's capacities, they simply carry SOME of each other's talk groups to allow users to transition across the systems and maintain connection to their dispatchers.

Based on this logic, combine:

MD FIRST with Baltimore City
MD FIRST with Harford County
Harford County with CMARC
PG with Montgomery County
York County with Cumberland County
Cumberland County with PA-STARS

the list goes on

 

[wa8pyr]

If this is the case, I'll get you a list together. I'm sure the DB admin will have a lot of trouble combining networked systems of dislike types. Seems like a bunch of crap to me, decisions made by someone who has never listened to the system and is unfamiliar with the set-up. They are two systems with two controllers, they cannot share one another's capacities, they simply carry SOME of each other's talk groups to allow users to transition across the systems and maintain connection to their dispatchers.

Based on this logic, combine:

MD FIRST with Baltimore City
MD FIRST with Harford County
Harford County with CMARC
PG with Montgomery County
York County with Cumberland County
Cumberland County with PA-STARS

the list goes on

Don't bother, it would be a waste of your time and ours. If they're dissimilar systems, they cannot be truly networked together, only patched. Patching does not count as networking.

EDACS systems can be networked together as can P25 systems. Motorola Smartnet systems can be networked together, sort of. But EDACS to Motorola? No.

Database policy is that networked systems are listed as a single entity. I see no reason to change that policy.

 

[emtLarmy15]

The point is all the tAlkgroups can't be heard on both systems... There are actually less than 10...

If this has always been the policy then why just now are the systems interlinked.

On these two separate "networked" systems it's going to breed confused people asking why they can't hear this or that while on the Worcester site vs the ocean city site.

 

[DisasterGuy]

To provide some clarification, the Worcester County system and Ocean City system are (and have always been) fully networked. There are no patches between the two systems as they rely on a Network Interface Module to link them at the system level. Any resource (user, talkgroup, conventional interface, etc) can operate on either system natively. With that said, users and talkgroups can be either allowed on a single site, allowed to roam between sites or "forced" onto multiple sites. In the case of the agreement between Ocean City and Worcester County all of the above situations exist to allow maximum coverage while taking site loading into consideration.

So, to answer the questions posed, while there are two systems that can each stand alone - the way that they are connected does in fact make them function as one system. As a result there is close coordination between the system with each party having blocks of LIDs, talkgroup IDs, etc available for use on their portion of the system.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[maus92]

Like I said previously, it will be interesting to see how this administrative dictum plays out when a 700 FiRST radio has the ability to switch to a linked/networked county system on 800 (or 700 if we are talking about PG.) Will the county's system be absorbed into /merged with the state system's RR database entry, like what apparently has happened with Ocean City / Worcester listing.... Perhaps this helps with RR database structure, but doesn't necessarily reflect licensing structure.

 

[freqhopping]

I don't even know all the technical aspects yet I always wondered why they were listed separately when it seemed pretty clear to me it was essentially a multi-site system. No reason to not program one system, two sites and a single set of talkgroups that work for both sites.

 

[mikewazowski]

The point is all the tAlkgroups can't be heard on both systems... There are actually less than 10...

If this has always been the policy then why just now are the systems interlinked.

On these two separate "networked" systems it's going to breed confused people asking why they can't hear this or that while on the Worcester site vs the ocean city site.

That's the way it's been with Motorola Smartnet and SmartZone systems for years. Not every talkgroup can be heard on every site.

Sometimes groups of talkgroups for a certain user can be separated out and listed separately in the database as belonging to a certain site. In other cases RR members have setup Wiki pages explaining what can be found on each site.

 

[emtLarmy15]

Just guess it's frustrating to me that someone decided to change it without really saying hey we're going to do this. If the systems had recently had a major change (such as the upcoming migration to p25) that would have seemed to me to be a better time since the old systems in the database would become obsolete

 

[emtLarmy15]

The other reason they were two systems in the database is RR is older than the SEPARATE Worcester system. OC had their own system since 1992/4ish and it was listed in the database for some time. Worcester didn't build their separate system until 2002. And it was submitted as a new system that shared a few select tAlkgroups with the OC system.