[tastyfreeze]

That could be malfunctioning hardware, turned off AIS, or a gap in recording. Smaller deviations from a line are most likely GPS jitter. AIS is transmitted over VHF. Terrestrial stations listen for the transmitted AIS messages to record them for public consumption.

Source: I collect AIS data over TCP/IP directly from my orgs ships.

[itnerd]

Any details on your AIS setup, or links to a similar configuration?

[tastyfreeze]

A contractor manages bridge hardware so I am missing details. They set it up. I troubleshoot and use the data.

AIS is connected to a serial-to-ethernet converter. That allows me to get the AIS stream over TCP/IP. I wrote an application to consume AIS and do what they wanted with it.

The serial-to-ethernet converters are the magic ingredient. It allowed us to have tracking and telemetry regardless of terrestrial VHF stations in the area. The original setup also provided a feed from Transas but we stopped using it. We also use a private AIS VHF recorder as a backup source of AIS messages. We used that a lot more before Starlink due to terrestrial blockage of VSAT links. The backup source was a good compliment to the primary. They had the most infra in areas that were blocked most often.