What is new in the SNIP 3_12_00 release – released October 30th, 2023
(updating the prior release of 3_11 issued on September 08th, 2023)

This is the next production release of SNIP following the Rev 3_11 release.  This release contains both major and minor improvements in response to user requests.  This release supports both 32-bit and 64-bit installations on all Windows Platforms from Windows 7 to the current editions.

It is recommended that all Windows SNIP installations now update to using this release.

Changes in this release include

Reports

All requests for any report, GIS map, or various other summaries are now processed in different ways based on  the callers source IP.  This provides two important benefits, improved security, and correct IP use in linkages in the report.  This also has value with SNIP hosted on  virtual machines (VMs, such as an AWS hosted deployments) whenever local loop-back rules prohibit the machine from asking for web pages from itself.  In more detail…   When the request is made from inside SNIP (using the document viewer or various menu commands), the local IP of the host machine is used in the replies and the request is always granted admin rights.  When the request is made from inside the machine using any local browser, the host machine local IP is used in the replies and the request may be granted admin rights depending on the report.  When the request is made from outside the machine (from an IP that is not the host or the public IP of the machine) the request is processed as usual, complete with security checks for the requesting parties privileges.  Various links found in the report are adjusted to follow this process as well.

As a result of the above most “s-reports” (SNIP reports) are now only used with inside the SNIP document viewer.

In Rev 3.11 Base Station reports were providing details regarding connected users (NTRIP Clients) when they should not have. These reports should ONLY provide such details when a user with Admin rights has requested the report. This has now been corrected.

A few additional map display reports also now make use of the newer display style and format that was introduced in Rev 3.11   The older map style has not yet been removed, this will occur in a future release.

NEAR Streams

A minor bug was found and corrected in serial port data streams when this type of stream was used in any NEAR streams.  Short lapses in data resulting in no observational message content were not being detected as they are in other stream types.  As a result of this, any users (NTRIP Clients) which were connected to serial stream by way of a NEAR stream were being starved and were not being automatically switched to a more suitable data stream.  The operation is now working correctly; should there be any data starvation events, after ~5 seconds, the base station serial stream is removed from the NEAR pool and any connected users are then automatically connected to the best alternative stream.  The offending base station may rejoin the after a period of correct operation has again elapsed.

IP Processing

This release corrects a bug where URL strings with “4-part” names (in other words, a domain with two levels of sub-domains like “positionz-rt.linz.govt.nz”) were not being resolving into the correct IP value.

Also corrected a bug where some newly blocked IP values, when the value was  entered using the menu command:  Setup ⇒ IP Ban/Block Settings ⇒ Block an IP were not always being saved to the settings file.

Map and GIS Displays

The simple “map it” link (used in base station reports and tool tips) was not shown at all times for some base stations.  This has been corrected. Pressing this link will open the default browser on the host machine and open a “plain Jane” Goggle map which is centered at the base station location.   This allow general GIS browsing of the nearby area, while some of the other map produce specialty maps which are centered on the base station along with coverage circles and also show other nearby base stations and any connected users – each with detailed pop up reports.

In tables for several reports the country of origin has now been added to the display even when the specific city is not known.

SNIP Service Monitor Update

The Service monitor tool has been updated to Rev 1.3 with this release.  The new release is installed automatically with the update (the program is called: “SNIPserviceMon.exe”).   This update was promoted by a Danish deployment that reported that the tool falsely presumed that the “fall back” the seasonal change in the local time (daylight saving time) was a stalled copy of SNIP needing a restart.  The new tool correctly detects system time changes and processes them correctly.

Misc. Improvments

• In the decoding of NTRIP Client connection details shown in the console log, SNIP now shows the user name and password in their fully decoded format after the Base64 format line which is used in transmission.   Enable the display of these connection details by checking the box marked Show Protocol Details on the Caster and Clients tab and set the Log Threshold value to be “minor.”  An example of this is displayed below:

GET /ExampleAgBaseStation HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: NTRIP AgOpenGPSClient/20221020
Authorization: Basic VXNlckBFeGFtcGxlLmNvbTpub25l   [Decodes as: User@Example.com:none] 
Accept: */*
Connection: close

• Report layouts were revised in in minor ways to improve the visual layout of the display on Android phones and other small screen devices.
• Long lists of NTRIP Agents are no longer shown at the bottom of the STATUS command and other reports.  Rather, a summary count of the different agent is provided if more then 50 are in use.  The user can push the NTRIP Agents button to see the full list. [The other nearby buttons, All Agents,  SNIP NTRIP Agents, and Browser Agents produce similar lists when pressed.]
• A bug in the Customer “staff accounts” process has been corrected where newly created staff members could not log in until SNIP was restarted.  Also note that any changes made to staff account are not saved into a long term file until the owning customer it itself saved with the updates.
• When a Customer Account logs into the SNIP Web API, they can now either provide the name of their realm on the screen, or skip it and SNIP will match it to existing records. When any customer’s staff accounts logs in, they always MUST provide the realm.
• A few debugging comments inadvertently appearing in the console log from the Rev 3.11 release have been removed.

How to Update…

Updates to SNIP are always free and easy.  Your Caster will be offline about 3 minutes.  From within SNIP, simply use the menu item Help ⇒ Check for Updates…   Your update will be downloaded from our secure servers and then you will be asked to allow SNIP to restart and update itself.  On some Windows 10 systems you must also manually exit the current copy of SNIP to update.  Takes under three minutes to do and have your Caster back on-line. That’s all there is to it!