I currently feed Flightaware using Planeplotter from a Windows PC. I am behind a corporate firewall and have negotiated the required port availability for PlanePlotter. Looking over posts here I see that the firewall\network router must use port 1200.
In discussing the upcoming need to change my feed from PlanePlotter to “piaware” with the corporate network\security people they tell me that they would be willing to set up a path from the PC’s port 1200 to your server. However, they will absolutely not allow the use of a Linux system (piaware) on the network. Are there any plans to have a Windows version of piaware available before the cutoff of PlanePlotter feeds?
I can’t find a reference but FlightAware staff have stated here on the forum that there are no plans for a Windows feed client.
You could in theory run the dump1090 windows application and route out the beast data to a piaware running somewhere else, which in turn feeds flightaware.
Strange that they can’t just put the piaware on its own virtual network so it can’t see the corporate network at all but just the internet.
Anyway not my business, sorry i can’t really help
That is what I would suggest too. To me is strange that they would let anything running “foreign” on that network, if they care so much about security.
There is possibly some confusion here. There’s no need to open any sort of port forwarding inwards towards your PC. You only need to be able to make outwards connections towards port 1200 on the FlightAware servers. Your IT people may be happier with an outwards-only firewall rule.
The port can be negotiated with IT. PlanePlotter uses a bi-directional port.
The problem is the machine’s operating system. It must be Windows. That’s why I asked whether there were any plans to create a Windows version of piaware.
The machines on the network are all Windows. There are hundreds of machines running on two or three domains but all go to the outside world through one high-end interface.
The IT people understand Windows. They feel they can control Windows machines but not other operating systems. Unfortunately one small application, not essential for the organization, cannot justify an exception. We will just continue running PlanePlotter.
PlanePlotter (PP) is currently fed by Dump1090 running on the Windows machine. Both run on the same machine…PP then feeds Flightaware. I guess Flightaware, which is after all, a for-profit corporation, has more than enough piaware sites so that they don’t need to invest in a windows port of the code.
PlanePlotter (PP) has nowhere near the number of sites that Flightaware does. However PP does have its own MLAT capability using the network of PP sites. It also shares traffic between its sites via its own server. It is a very versatile program. See PlanePlotter from COAA . Traffic shared from other sites is not uploaded to sites outside the PP network.
I’m guessing we will see less traffic using just the PP network, but that’s the way it goes.
Have you considered Windows Subsystem for Linux? It is a feature that needs to be added using the Turn Windows Features On and Off (or something called very similar, I’m not on a Windows machine at the moment so I can’t check it but I have used this feature). Once enabled you can start Linux services. There would likely need to be minor changes made to PiAware but more on the level of what it might take to port PiAware to a different Linux distribution. And come to think of it, the Ubuntu distribution is the original and most supported distribution that runs in the Windows Subsystem for Linux. You can even use “apt update” and “apt install” and the latest WSL2 even contains a complete authentic Linux kernel released and supported by Microsoft, running in a lightweight virtualization layer. You might be able to simply follow the directions for installing PiAware on Ubuntu and it might work.
