International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks

Thread: Next generation miniSEED - 2016-3-30 straw man change proposal 11 - Define network code as 6 characters and convention for temporary deployments

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Started: 2016-08-11 19:57:40
Last activity: 2016-08-12 04:32:49

Hi all,

Change proposal #11 to the 2016-3-30 straw man (iteration 1) is attached: Define network code as 6 characters and convention for temporary deployments.

Please use this thread to provide your feedback on this proposal by Wednesday August 24th.

thanks,
Chad




  • I support this but have three thoughts that may improve this.

    First, is that all pre-existing temporary networks should get new
    unique identifiers. So XC from 1992 should get a network code that
    identifies it as distinct from XC in 1993. Obviously some backwards
    compatibility is important, so the code XC should never again be used
    but XC in a data requests for a time window in 1992 should still work,
    but would be nice to have a path so that eventually the old two
    character temporary network codes are deprecated. So the proposal
    should include a mapping from existing temporary codes into the new 6
    digit codes. A natural mapping would be something like XC from 1992
    gets XC92 or XC1992 or 1992XC.

    Second, if there is a mapping and it follows the above proposal,
    should we worry about Y2K type issues go ahead and use the 4 digit
    year? I believe there is plenty of room in the 6 char space to keep
    the full year as the 2 remaining characters give up to 36x36=1296
    temporary network codes per year, which seems plenty. I did not do a
    complete search, but there is at least an XA from 1969 (lunar
    seismometers), 53 years is a while, but might as well future proof
    this as much as reasonable.

    Third, there is an advantage of reversing the mapping so that the year
    comes first and the characters come after. In this way, we follow the
    existing "XYZ or digit as first character means temporary network"
    convention, but the first character being a year is always a number.
    This also makes the mapping unique and easy for old temporary
    networks, prepend the start year. And because the start of they year
    will always be a 1 or a 2, frees up all network codes that start with
    0,3,..,9 and are longer than 2 characters to be held in reserve for
    future use. Maybe all permanent martian networks will start with the
    number 4. Some of this may be beyond what we need to worry about, but
    6 chars is big enough I would recommend at least holding a part of the
    network code space back for future unknown uses.

    thanks
    Philip



    On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 3:59 PM, Chad Trabant <chad<at>iris.washington.edu> wrote:

    Hi all,

    Change proposal #11 to the 2016-3-30 straw man (iteration 1) is attached:
    Define network code as 6 characters and convention for temporary
    deployments.

    Please use this thread to provide your feedback on this proposal by
    Wednesday August 24th.

    thanks,
    Chad





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