# TinyGS vs. SatNOGS: A Comparative Analysis of Open-Source Satellite Ground Station Networks
## 5 Discussion
### Comparison of the Number of GSs That Were Online in the Last 24 h on 29 July 2023  
In the TinyGS web application, at the time of writing of this article, only the GSs that have been online in the last 24 h are available. Some may be offline, but that means they have only went offline within the last 24 h. In this way, in order to determine the number of TinyGS that had been online in the last 24 h, the TinyGS web application was consulted, and the result was obtained [23]. In SatNOGS, we utilized the SatNOGS Network API [10] to access information about all SatNOGS GSs. Only the GSs that were online or went offline within the last 24 h were selected. To make this selection, we considered only the \"status\" parameter for online GSs and both the \"status\" and \"last_seen\" parameters for offline ones. The \"last_seen\" parameter allowed us to determine the date and time when a GS was last seen by the network, indicating when it had gone offline. It is important to highlight that within the offline GSs observed by the network in the last 24 h, this category includes GSs marked with a \"Testing\" status. GSs designated as \"Testing\" are not available for other observers to schedule observations; only the GS owner has this privilege. This distinction introduces a level of inaccuracy in determining the number of GSs online in the last 24 h, as some may have a \"last_seen\" timestamp within this timeframe but with a status of \"Testing\" rather than \"Online\". On TinyGS, we found 1307 GSs, while on SatNOGS, we found 255 GSs. This means that TinyGS had approximately five times more antennas online. Comparison of the Geographical Distribution of GSs That Were Online in the Last 24 h on 29 July 2023  
In Figure 6, the distribution of the TinyGS GSs that were online in the last 24 h on 29 July 2023 are shown. In Figure 7, one can find the distribution of the SatNOGS GSs that were online in the last 24 h on 29 July 2023. The first observation is that, in both projects, most of the GSs are found in Europe and North America. Then, in both projects, a small number of GSs can be observed in South America and on the African and Asian continents. As a result, if the reader intends to build a GS and has the possibility of building it in areas with lower numbers of GSs, this construction would be very helpful to these networks. Comparing both projects, one can observe and conclude that TinyGS had a better distribution than SatNOGS on 29 July 2023. Figure 6: TinyGS GS distribution on the 29 July 2023. Comparison of the Frequency Bands Used by GSs That Were Online in the Last 24 h on 29 July 2023 and the Number of GSs That Use Them  
In Figure 8, one can find the bands used by the TinyGS GSs. The \"None\" column represents the GSs that had no information in the \"Band\" field. This field can be found in all of the stations of the web application [23]. The columns that have the bands in square brackets represent GSs that work in multiple bands. For example, a GS that works in a frequency range between 90 and 2500 MHz is in the column [VHF, S] because it works in the VHF bands up to S, that is, VHF, UHF, L, and S.  
Ignoring the GSs classified as \"None\", it can be concluded that about 76% of the GSs work only in the UHF band. The reason for this is due to the fact that most of the satellites supported by TinyGS work in that band. Figure 8: Bands used by TinyGS GSs in the last 24 h of 29 July 2023. Figure 7: SatNOGS GS distribution on the 29 July 2023. A SatNOGS GSs histogram was created and is shown in Figure 9. For SatNOGS, the process was relatively easier because it was enough to observe the \"band\" parameter of each GS [10]. For GSs with more than one band, one unit was added to the respective bands. For example, for a GS that works in the UHF and VHF bands, one unit was added in the UHF column and another in the VHF. However, if a GS has a band like UHF, UHF, VHF, VHF, L, it was considered equal to VHF, UHF, L or, as in the histogram, [VHF, L].