HiSeasNet: Internet on the High Seas for 6 years and counting

Transcription

1 HiSeasNet: Internet on the High Seas for 6 years and counting Inmartech 2008 Steve Foley Scripps Institution of Oceanography

2 Overview HiSeasNet: The system What it is Coverage areas Equipment HiSeasNet: The platform What it can do HiSeasNet: The project Project organization and costs Lessons learned so far Future work

3 Overview HiSeasNet: The system What it is Coverage areas Equipment HiSeasNet: The platform What it can do HiSeasNet: The project Project organization and costs Lessons learned so far Future work

4 What is HiSeasNet? Satellite network extending the Internet to research platforms at sea Connects University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) fleet of US-based research vessels Internet Protocol (IP) based for flexibility Always on, fixed cost Uses C-band (global coverage) and Ku-band (coastal coverage) antennas RF gear is Codan, networking is Cisco, antennas are SeaTel, Prodelin, and Vertex This is network infrastructure!

5 HiSeasNet Services Satellite bandwidth Ship-to-shore: 96kbps (C-Band), 64kbps (Ku) Shore-to-ship: 256kbps for 5 slots on both AOR and POR C-Band satellites (~50kbps per ship, but shared) 192 kbps for 3 slots on North Ku-Band, 256kbps for 4 slots on Gulf Ku-Band Beam 2 (~64kbps/ship but shared) Earth station connection to Internet in San Diego at SIO Direct routing through to home institution Run your own IP services however you want ( , web browsing, VoIP, video teleconferencing, file transfers, campus services, data exchange, remote control, etc.) Ship and shore equipment maintenance 2x/yr

6 Pacific C-band Coverage

7 Atlantic/Eastern Pacific C-band

8 Ku-Band Coverage (SatMex5) Beam 1 R/V New Horizon R/V Point Sur R/V Wecoma Beam 2 R/V Endeavor R/V Oceanus R/V Pelican R/V Walton Smith

9 Current setup Now at 15 (8 C-band, 7 Ku-band) ships and 1 fixed station Station is BAS on South Georgia Island on its own 128kbs C- band link through the AOR satellite. Ship slots 5 C-band POR, 5 C-band AOR (10 slots for 8 ships adds mobility between ocean regions) 4 Gulf Ku-band, 3 North Ku-band Earth station is 3 antennas: 7m Vertex POR C-Band (using Intelsat 701) 7m Vertex AOR C-Band (using Intelsat 707) 3.8m Prodelin Ku-Band on 2 beams (using SatMex5 beams 1 and 2) C-band ships use 2.4m SeaTel antennas Ku-band ships use 1.5m, 1.2m, or 0.95 SeaTel antennas

10 What does it look like?

11 Current HiSeasNet Fleet C-Band (2.4m dish, Global coverage) Atlantis Kilo Moana Knorr Melville Revelle Seward Johnson Thompson Langseth Ku-Band (North America coastal coverage) Endeavor (1.2m) New Horizon (1.2m) Oceanus (1.5m) Pelican (1m) Point Sur (1m) Walton Smith (1m) Wecoma (1.5m)

12 Antenna/Radome Comparisons C-Band (9797) Ku-Band (6006) Small Ku-band (4006) 144 in 72 in 48 in 2.4m dish 1.5m dish 400 lbs Pedestal mount Rx gain: 42.5dB 1m dish 250 lbs Pedestal mount Rx gain: 40.1 db

13 Typical Ship Network Setup Purple: RF Teal: Sync serial Orange: Public IP space Blue: Ethernet

14 High Level Network View

15 Brief history of over 7 years Started in with one C-band ship and commercial teleport (Feb 02) Added two C-band ships and our own earth station with 7m POR antenna (Late 03) Added more C-Band ships ( 04-07) Added 7m C-band AOR antenna (Apr 05) Added 3.8m Ku-Band antenna for coastal and Gulf of Mexico coverage (Sep 05) Added fixed BAS station South Georgia Island (Oct 05) Added more Ku-band ships ( 05-present) Temporary operation of one ship in IOR through commercial teleport ( 07) 88kbps/96kbps (down/up) Added 3.8m Ku-band antenna for northern coastal coverage (Sep 07)

16 Indian Ocean C-band (2007)

17 Overview HiSeasNet: The system What it is Coverage areas Equipment HiSeasNet: The platform What it can do HiSeasNet: The project Project organization and costs Lessons learned so far Future work

18 What HiSeasNet Can Do exchanges (bigger/longer than before) Web browsing Video streaming/conferencing VoIP Bulk file transfers Instant messaging Remote control of equipment Software updating, patching License server access for large programs Plenty more! What can you think of?

19 Science outreach Applications Video conferencing, blogs, website updates, collaborations, images, videos Science Literature searches, web-based funding paperwork, results to shore, analysis/datasets from shore Technical troubleshooting Images, phone calls, video snippits, remote control/monitoring, instant messaging, Google Ship operations Weather updates, parts orders, inventory updates, clearance documents, agent communications Ship life News, s, blogs, online banking/shopping/etc.

20 Recent Projects ROADNet (ongoing) Data (weather, position, images) from ships streaming back in real-time Shallow Water 2006 Multi-ship, mooring, and glider coordination between 5 ships with wireless links, then off to shore via HiSeasNet Newfoundland 2008 Temporary (1 month) increase to 256kbps off Kuband ship for video streaming back to shore, broadcast over web May be able to burst short term bandwidth more in the future if conditions are right.

21 How life is different with HiSeasNet More accessibility at sea But harder to get away from the office Easier to bring students out to sea Lectures and notes can be recorded and sent to sea More reliance on communications systems and higher expectations for being online HiSeasNet is a critical system now NOT as much demand for new services as expected But reliability of and web is paramount

22 What more can HiSeasNet do? IP based, so just about anything is possible Large delay, high jitter, so real-time applications (like VoIP) can be tricky to do well. Buffering helps. The sky is the limit suggestions on what to try?

23 Overview HiSeasNet: The system What it is Coverage areas Equipment HiSeasNet: The platform What it can do HiSeasNet: The project Project organization and costs Lessons learned so far Future work

24 Cost Equipment cost (including spares) $185,000 for C-band gear $85,000 to $120,000 for Ku-band gear Bandwidth $750/mo/ship Ku-band $3000/mo/ship C-band Prices for 1 year, pre-emptible contracts Operating cost per ship $250/day C-band, $150/day Ku-band Includes bandwidth, maintenance, earth station operation Funding provided by the National Science Foundation

25 HiSeasNet Staffing Operations are handled by 1 person, part time at SIO Maintenance work is contracted out to CommSystems, roughly 1 person fulltime Office/administrative work is 1 person part time at SIO

26 Lessons Learned We have regular outages (ship structure, equipment failures, etc.) Need spares on board Training for techs is helping during equipment problems Raising antennas above structures is helpful, but not always possible Coverage is not global from San Diego earth station Can contract with commercial stations for IOR or Mediterranean areas Ku-band ships are sometimes out of range Are trying short term contracts on other satellites

27 More Lessons Learned Bandwidth is always available, but with delay and jitter. Conservation still helps. Web proxies Cache pages and limit useless data (ie ads) Control user access and is network choke point Limiting simultaneous users Policies are as useful as technology. Includes: Who gets priority? Science use, usually. Who can use the web and for how long? What traffic is allowed? Not allowed? Common use policies among ships is not viable too many differences between ships Viruses, spam, worms, malware, hackers, and security practices still apply at sea now!

28 Failures and Spares Most problems are user or ship related Power outage, antenna repoints, gyro failure, unfamiliarity with gear, etc. Solution: Presented 4-day training program and techs are more capable of tracking down their own problems (and finding out what is normal) Antennas still have tracking problems sometimes, but failures are somewhat uncommon RF gear failures are major cause of catastrophic ship outages Solution: Have expanded spares kit on board including RF gear for troubleshooting needs. Allows for repairs at sea. Still have depot/earth station RF spares in SD

29 Recent Improvements Installed gear on some new ships. Almost all UNOLS ships capable of HiSeasNet are outfitted with HiSeasNet antennas. Improved current satellite beam services Remote control, added bandwidth, extra slots Web site ( improvements Added slot schedule and network diagram Added file repository (drivers, guides, etc.) Launched wiki with growing FAQ and additional resources for scientists and operators Breakdown for each ship s bandwidth usage Presented technician training class at WHOI

30 Future Work Focus is now on maintenance and operations, infrastructure improvement Possibly expand Ku-band carriers to cover more of POR. Possibly GE-23 over N. Pacific. Requires another antenna at the earth station More training classes (multi-day, hands-on, theoretical and practical) More documentation, troubleshooting guides, discussion online Continue routine (2x/yr) maintenance/upgrades of all equipment Figure out how to get scientists to exploit it! How do we get the best service with the least shore support?

31 Questions? Comments?