Question:

What exactly is 'Srcname (ie sourcename)? I mean, are these names of directories somewhere on (my localhost) that hold the data? Or is this sort of an internal orb thing going on?

Answer:

Srcname refers to the name of a collection of "packets" that have been sent to the orbserver. A sensor sends data to a digitizer which bundles the data into a packet. When a packet is 'full' it is passed along to the orb with a given srcname, a time value, and a packet id. You will sometimes see that some sources with channels such as LH or VH (1 or 0.1 sps) have larger latencies than channels such as HH. This is because 100sps data fills a packet quicker than 0.1 sps data due to larger volumes of data being recorded.

The srcnames are normally controlled by the data import method you are using. See for instance the manpage for k22orb(1) under 'ORB OUTPUT PACKETS'

There is a detailed discussion about srcnames in the Dataflow Within Antelope document that can be found in $ANTELOPE/doc/dataflow.pdf