DSDPlus Understanding "OTA Talker Aliases"?

[rkillins]

Can anyone suggest a good resource that explains OTA alias? I was away from DSD+ FL for a while and on my return I see the effects of this new feature (v2.505?). An explanation of what (talker) aliases are (i think they are radio textual ids programmed into the system that are transmitted with the unit's transmission), what an alias server is?

What do the different menu options related to alias in the DSDPlus Misc. menu do? I don't have enough understanding of what talker aliases are and how DSDPlus uses them, so documentation like in the changelog for v2.509 "Added menu entry to limit number of per-radio Alias Priority OTA alias data acquisition attempts. Useful for systems that have a mix of radios with and without alias data broadcasts present." is a head scratcher.

Why am I seeing "alias" pop up in the pri column of DSDPlus when a transmission is initiated?

Sorry, I just don't understand. Grateful for anyone able to erxplain it to me like I was 5, or point me in the direction of references that I can self educate.

 

[slicerwizard]

The LMRN and Kitchener-Waterloo P25 systems transmit radio names (talker aliases) on the voice channels during voice calls. The aliases are entered into a database that is part of the radio system. The radios themselves are not transmitting the aliases. Durham Region and Niagara County are a couple of other ~local P25 systems that broadcast talker aliases.

DSD+ decodes those alias broadcasts and adds them to the DSDPlus.radios file. It also sends them to a server that makes those aliases available to other DSD+ users. That lets those users see those aliases without having to wait for those radios to transmit. You can control whether or not your copy of DSD+ queries this server for aliases or instead just waits until aliases are decoded locally off the air.

You're seeing "Alias" in the priority column because DSD+ is giving a call a high priority because DSD+ is chasing a radio's talker alias broadcast. This behaviour appears to be pretty much identical to how DSD+ has chased NEXEDGE talker aliases on systems like OnQ for the last decade or so. Only difference I can see is that there is a menu option to disable this call priority boosting on P25 systems.

Limiting attempts - on LMRN, the OPP radios don't have talker aliases, at least not yet, and maybe never. Without an attempt limit, DSD+ would chase OPP calls for the next ten years for aliases that don't exist. I wouldn't be surprised if most talker alias enabled P25 systems have at least a few radios with no associated talker alias in the system's database.

I would imagine that the default settings in the DSD+ talker alias menu would work just fine for you, unless there is a specific behaviour that you don't like. If you don't like DSD+ abandoning a call to chase an alias, uncheck Acquire Using Alias Priority. If you don't want to see notifications about talker aliases, uncheck those options. And so on...