Callsign routing in D-Star

The following post summarizes the adventures of Matt (M0KJI) and Pablo (me, M0PQA): two middle aged men, less than 2 miles away from each other, trying to talk on their 7100s. One of the features of D-Star that I enjoy the most is callsign routing. I enjoy what it does as much as how it does it. Using the IRC protocol for implementing call routing in the core of D-Star is an exercise of pure ingenuity that I truly appreciate. The ircDBB network. Diagram from here Callsign routing has been around in D-Star since forever. Even the now yellowish user manual of my 7100 shows how to do it. However, with the proliferation of hotpots, the backbone of callsign routing for D-Star decided to service only proper repeaters, and leave hotspots without access to their network. This decision triggered rapid changes in the default configuration of Pi-Star, the software that you are running in your hotspot, to make use of a different network, named Quadnet - www.openquad.net ...