Before even asking the question, I feel that I will regret doing so for fear of confusing matters even more.
Here goes anyway...
When there is a collection of AllStar nodes connected to each other, for example 'East Coast Reflector', 'HUBnet', 'Canada Net', 'FreeStar', 'Seattle Repeater Group' etc.
What is that entity called?
Is it an AllStar Net, Group, Hub, Reflector, Community, Conference (shall I stop now?)
In DMR there are Talk-Groups. In Yaesu System Fusion/C4FM there are Rooms. In D-Star I believe the term is Reflectors.
In AllStar, everything is just called a node. That’s the only official term. Whether it’s hooked up to a repeater, a simplex radio, or has no radio at all, it’s still just a node. There’s no built-in idea of “rooms” or “talkgroups” like in other systems.
What you’re describing—like HUBNet, East Coast Reflector, FreeStar, etc.—are usually called hub nodes, or just hubs. These are usually radioless nodes that people link to as a central point, kind of like a meeting place. But technically, there’s nothing special about them. Any node can be used as a hub. The only thing that makes a hub a hub is that people decide to use it that way.
So yeah—“hub” is probably the most common term for that setup, but it’s more of a community convention than a technical distinction.
I think this is the most important part of what's implicitly asked in the question. Unlike the other technologies mentioned, ASL is designed to be an ad-hoc structure. DMR, D-STAR, YSF, etc... the "reflector" type systems are all designed around a base-client "star" topology. All clients talk to one master. Yes you can do creative things to get around it, but that's different than a baked-in design.
ASL was intended, from the ground up, to be an ad-hoc connection that specifically supports an N:M connection model. A node is a node is a node regardless of how you intend to use it contra to things like MMDVM hotspots, or C-Bridges or whatever. A node can be as something as trivial as a hotspot up to a massive connection termination hub that functions with a "mesh of hubs" all in the same package. So, at the end of the day, any name is technically appropriate because the name does not define the function like in other technologies.
I completely agree with the 'community convention' label. I was not expecting any technical distinction.
FYI. My reason for asking the question was to get some clarity when trying to expain the whole concept of AllStar to newbies. Nodes and Repeaters and the linking of the above etc
I run a couple of 'rural' gateways and repeaters here in the th UK. So now I can be a bit tighter and more accurate with the info on the QRZ pages for the above.
