ok so ive been running APRS for about 6 months now and i think i understand the basics but every time someone asks me to explain the difference between an igate and a digipeater i kind of fumble through it and im not totally sure i have it right

like i get that a digipeater retransmits the RF packets and an igate connects RF to the internet (aprs-is) but in practice when i look at my map on aprs.fi i see stations that are labeled as both and i dont really understand how that works or if you need both running on the same hardware or what

im running a TNC-Pi on a raspberry pi with direwolf and a spare 2m rig, currently set up as an igate only because thats what the direwolf docs made easier to configure first. should i bother enabling the digipeater function too or does it depend on how many other digis are in the area? theres maybe 2 or 3 within range of me based on what i can see on the map but i dont know if thats enough or too few

yeah the confusion is totally normal, the terminology gets muddy fast. so basically a digipeater just grabs the packet off RF and rebroadcasts it on RF — it never touches the internet at all. this is how someone out in the field with a handheld gets their position relayed further than their radio can reach on its own. the igate on the other hand hears those RF packets and pipes them up to the APRS-IS network so they show up on aprs.fi and stuff like that.

running both on the same hardware is pretty common actually, lots of people do exactly that with direwolf. you just configure both functions in the direwolf.conf and it handles it. the thing is whether you SHOULD run a digi depends heavily on your local RF environment. if you're in an area that already has good digipeater coverage you could actually cause more harm than good by adding another one — you'd be creating extra RF congestion and potentially causing collisions. pull up aprs.fi and look at what's actually being heard by the digis near you and whether there are coverage gaps. if you're in a city with 3 solid digis already, probably just stick with igate only. if you're on a hill and can see terrain that isn't being covered, then yeah fire up the digi function.

one thing i'd add — if you do decide to enable digipeating, make sure you set your UIDIGI or equivalent alias handling correctly in direwolf otherwise you'll end up passing packets you shouldn't be or not passing ones you should. the WIDE1-1 and WIDE2-1 path stuff trips people up. there's a good section in the direwolf user guide on this, the Bob Bruninga stuff too if you can find his old documentation, rest his soul, he really built out all the theory behind how paths are supposed to work and a lot of that context makes the config options make way more sense