4.4.5 Monitoring Other Stations
Use the MONITOR parameter to determine what kinds of packets you will
see when you are NOT connected to any another station.
"MONITOR" takes a numerical value between "0" (zero) and "6." Each
higher number adds more detail to your monitoring. As the value of
the MONITOR setting is increased, additional functions are included in
the monitoring sequences. The meanings of the MONITOR numbers are:
0 Monitoring is disabled.
1 Only unnumbered, "unconnected" frames are displayed. This
setting will display Beacons, but not display connected stations.
2 Numbered (I) frames are also displayed. Use this setting to
monitor connected conversations in progress on the channel.
3 Connect request ("C") frames and disconnect ("D") request packets
in addition to the above are displayed.
4 This is your PK-232's default value. Unnumbered acknowledgment
(UA) of connect and disconnect frames are also displayed with
either the characters "UA" or "DM" and a header.
5 Receiver Ready (RR), Receiver Not Ready (RN), Reject (RJ), and
Frame Reject (FR) supervisory frames are also displayed.
6 Poll/Final bit and sequence numbers for monitored frames are
shown.
Understanding all types of packet frames is not important to operate
packet. Packet operators should however understand that there are
many types of control frames that do not contain printable data.
Your PK-232 can display these frames, but most users only want to see
frames with information. For this reason, the default of the MONITOR
command (4) does not display all the packets that the PK-232 hears.
NOTE: If you will be leaving your PK-232 on to accept connects
from others while your computer is off, set MONITOR to 0
(zero) and type a <CTRL-S> to hold the data.
4.4.5.1 Monitoring the Packet Networking Switches
There are other types of frames used by networking switches that the
PK-232 does not normally display. These frames can be seen with the
MPROTO command. Turning the command MPROTO ON allows ALL AX.25 frames
to be displayed. Some packets you might see with MPROTO ON will
contain information that may interfere with the display on your
terminal or computer causing it to look "funny". For this reason the
MPROTO command default is OFF.
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