Feature Request: Group AAM messages

[hickey]

I have been looking at the AAM feature and it is a handy way of sending out notices to the node owners / users of the AREDN network. But I think that there is one aspect to the AAM feature that should be explored and that is being able to send out "group" AAM messages.

I see two primary use models for this feature.

1. Being able to send a message to an administrative domain. This could be a geographical region, connection type (backbone vs leaf nodes vs tunnels), etc.
2. Message type distinctions: weather alerts, DHS threat level, wild fire dangers, infrastructure changes, NHL game results (just kidding on the last one :-)

There may be more applications than my initial thoughts here. As I am thinking about planning out a deployment of nodes, I am trying to anticipate the operational needs of the network and coordinating across dozens of operators. I am just looking for ways to send out the alerts to nodes in a dynamic network where the core operators are not in control and may not really know the full network topology.

The way that I envision this would work (and it seems pretty simple to implement) is that there would be another variable added to the advanced configuration for the AAM settings. This variable would contain a list of "labels" that get checked for messages in addition to the node name and the all text files. For example, if the variable contained the value nfl (North Florida) the polling of AAM messages would also look for nfl.txt and if found would display the message with any other AAM messages. Again, this would be a list so the variable could be a list that would look up each label in turn so node operators could subscribe to a number AAM messages.