Infrastructure
The network
FlyItalyADSB was born in Italy and is now a global network: more than 3,000 private receivers around the world send us their data directly, not through intermediaries. Density is still highest over Europe and the Mediterranean, but more than a third of the receivers are in North America.
Direct feeders
Private receivers that send to us first-hand, from Italy to the rest of Europe, across both Americas, Asia and Oceania. Each antenna reaches up to 400 km and streams ADS-B and Mode-S in real time to the central ingest server. They are the global coverage — not the aggregators.
International aggregators
The readsb-globe server also connects to adsb.lol and theairtraffic.com, with MLAT data from those networks merged into the stream. They thicken the areas where our own receivers are sparse: the worldwide reach already comes from the direct feeders.
Where they are
Where the receivers are
Positions declared by the 1,635 MLAT receivers that share them — real coordinates, not IP geolocation. Italy is where the network started and where density per km² is still highest, but it is now a small share of the whole.
Counted per address: several receivers behind one connection count once, so the totals are a lower bound. Updated 9 August 2026.
Data pipeline
Ingestion
Feeders send BEAST TCP data to readsb-ingest (port 4905). Simultaneously, readsb-globe receives from adsb.lol and theairtraffic.com.
MLAT
MLAT clients (port 30100) send time-stamped measurements to mlat-server. With at least 4 synchronized receivers, the server triangulates aircraft position without GPS.
Aggregation
readsb-globe merges all feeds: direct feeders, computed MLAT, adsb.lol, theairtraffic.com, OGN. Outputs aircraft.json every 200ms and updates heatmap history.
Distribution
Data is served to the tar1090 map via local Unix socket and used by the weather-32 meteorological pipeline.
Add your receiver
More receivers mean better MLAT coverage and denser Mode-S data for meteorological research.