HiSeasNet Policy and Organization

1. HiSeasNet Policy and Organization Above and around all of the technical stuff: Organization and policies that hold HiSeasNet together

2. Overview • Business topics • Maintenance • Satellite bandwidth • Coverage area • Earth station structure • Other resources • What next?

3. Business Topics The interactions of HiSeasNet, satellite operators, NSF, ships, etc.

4. The Business of HiSeasNet • Think of HiSeasNet as an integrator. We do the following so that ships can have a network drop: • Lease satellite space segment on a yearly basis • Operate a US satellite earth station • Act as a friendly and flexible ISP to provide IP connectivity to stations • Maintain satellite hardware on ships and shore • Make changes based on ship requirements • Provide technical and operational support to ships at sea • Most of the limitations you will find are related to funding or come from entities we are integrating

5. Who HiSeasNet works with • Funding is largely via NSF • Satellite operations and leases through Intelsat (C-band), Loral (SatMex5b2), and CommSystems (SatMex5b1) • Maintenance and Integration with CommSystems • Stations operated by oceanographic institutions • Equipment supplied by Comtech, SeaTel, Codan, Vertex, Prodelin, Cisco, Digi, Hameg, ServerTech

6. Maintenance Issues related to care and feeding of your equipment

7. Routine maintenance • Routine maintenance performed roughly every 6 months, takes 1-2 days (see online calendar) • We try to combine ships in single visits to keep costs down so we can handle emergencies • CommSystems sends someone to the ship to walk through a checklist of items and record latest settings • Helps to have a ship tech available…is a great chance to refresh or ask new questions • Maintenance report is archived at SIOand sent to institution representatives. Please read and print this report! • Report is used in future troubleshooting

8. Emergency maintenance • We try to avoid emergency maintenance, but failures do happen • What we can do: • Work with you to troubleshoot and resolve problems based on our experience and resources (we need your help and answers to do this!) • Get in touch with manufacturer to work out details • Get parts to the ship (from our pool or factory) • Send someone to meet the ship, cost/problem dependent

9. Other maintenance • There may be times you want to have other non-routine maintenance done on your gear (upgrading equipment, want an additional look, moving antenna, etc.) • We expect you to be competent doing basic adjustments to the equipment parameters and able to read manuals • You are welcome to contract with CommSystems directly and pay for work that is not part of HiSeasNet operational responsibility.

10. Maintenance process • We like to have you make the changes to your ship if possible, so you know what changed. • With this training, we hope that you can do significant diagnostic work to minimize ship and shore interaction for a faster resolution • When hardware or a site visit is required: • Arranged through HiSeasNet staff, not directly with CommSystems. • We can work out schedule, priority, trouble ticket tracking, parts, etc. and keep all the necessary people in the loop.

11. Spares pool • We maintain a pool of spares in San Diego, CA that we can usually ship immediately. They include: • Spare RF gear for C-band and Ku-band antennas • SeaTel “premium” spares kit for C-band gear • SeaTel level cage and PCU for “xx06” antennas • SeaTel rotary joint • Comtech modems • Some Cisco router and networking parts • Misc RF connectors, cables, combiners, etc. • Marine Air air conditioner (for C-band antennas) • These usually cover both earth station gear and ship gear. They can also be borrowed for testing. • This is not everything that can go wrong.

12. Satellite bandwidth What bandwidth we have and the concept of “more”

13. Satellite bandwidth • HiSeasNet has the following space segment leased for ships: • IS-701: 5 slots (96kbps), 160kbps shared outroute • IS-707: 3 slots (96kbps), 180kbps shared outroute, expanding to 4 slots in March 08 (240kbps outroute) • IS-906: 1 slot (96kbps), 88kbps outroute (until 3/30/08) • SatMex5b1: 2 slots (64kbps), 128kbps shared outroute • SatMex5b2: 4 slots (64kbps), 256kbps shared outroute • Cost /mo/slot is ~$3k (C-band), $750 (Ku-band) • IP services for IS-906 ship provided by Intelsat (tunnel from ship to earth station through Internet) • Leases are preemptible. If the operator needs to move our signal, we are required to move.

14. Expanding bandwidth • Can be done a number of ways depending on how much you want, ship position, number of ships online, and bandwidth availability • Hardware • Modems and routers top out at 2 Mbit in any direction • C-band ship-to-shore power limits top out at 400kbps • Ku-band ship-to-shore power limits at 400kbps to 2Mbit depending on the ship configuration • Bandwidth • May already have bandwidth if not all slots are used • May need to be leased from satellite provider, will pay a premium for short term leases • May need to buy 3rd party downlink/ISP services • Must coordinate with HiSeasNet early!

15. Satellite operations • Contract limits bandwidth and power for all carriers. • Sat operator is the one that measures signal levels and characteristics • When a signal is too loud, we must turn it down quickly to continue to operate. If we cannot turn it down quickly, we may need to turn it off. • When we make major changes, we need to check with the operator to verify the level is okay. To make adjustments, we usually email the ship, then re-verify when we see a change is made.

16. Coverage Areas Ships move and satellites do not

17. Switching coverage areas • Ships can often move from one region to another. • This is possible via empty frequency slots on some satellites. • This requires scheduling which ships can transmit at what times. • We sometimes need to ask a ship to not transmit during an in-port or other down period. Please help us out with that. • We try to be as fair as possible if there is a conflict. Generally science mission has priority.

18. Procedures for changing coverage areas • Keep an eye on the slot chart. We update it when we notice the schedules changing, but you know your schedule better than we do • If you see a need to move from one region to another, please let us know ASAP so we don’t over look it. • We will try to contact you well in advance of a region move to make sure you are aware. • We will develop a “change document” in PDF format that will list the changes to be made. With it will be a suggested time to make the changes. Please proof the document and ask questions before the scheduled time.

19. Current coverage maps AOR POR SatMex5 beam 1 SatMex5 beam 2

20. Coverage areas • The HiSeasNet earth station currently operates with satellites in the POR, AOR, and North America regions • Additional coverage areas (Med, IOR, etc.) are available through independent contracts (NewSkies, Intelsat, etc.) since the HiSeasNet earth station cannot see the satellites in those areas • Changes required: • New configuration of equipment for space segment • New routing for a new ISP (may give static IPs?) • Sometimes new hardware to decode different frequencies • Bandwidth sharing advantage disappears

21. Earth Station What the stationary side looks like

22. Earth station setup • Very similar to a ship setup (antenna, RF, modem, router) but with a more complicated router setup and a lot more modems (mostly receive) • Infrastructure additions include: • Climate control and monitoring • Remote access to modem configuration • Remote access to a SpecAn • Building-wide UPS power • Antennas move slowly if at all • Maintenance done every year

23. Earth station layout

24. HiSeasNet Resources A network of people and resources, not just modems and routers

25. HiSeasNet self-serve resources • Website (www.hiseasnet.net) • Wiki (FAQ, organizational info, science info, wish list, etc.) • Slot scheduler • Calendar • FAQ • File archive • Ship schedules • Network diagrams • Traffic plots • Satellite footprints • Mailing lists (subscribe at website) • Operations (mostly announcements re: service) • Users (more for chatter among HiSeasNet end users)

26. Getting help • Look at the self-serve resources first • Contact the tech team via the email alias if possible (hiseasnet@ucsd.edu). This gets the quickest written response. Contact technical team by phone if you need to. • Send details of your problem. Include ADMC values/plots, specific behavior, info we can use to isolate the problem, requests for what we can do for you • Tell us what you have already done and what the results were. • Answer all of our questions. Really. • Consider AIM if you are online enough

27. HiSeasNet staff • PI: Dr. Jon Berger (jberger@ucsd.edu) • Carolyn Keen, Laura Cravens-Wertz (business) • Technical team (hiseasnet@ucsd.edu): • Steve Foley (primary contact, 858-822-3356, AIM: floatingsteve) • Geoff Davis (backup, 858-822-5756) • Brian Battistuz (backup, 858-534-7569) • Systems integrators (contracted to CommSystems) • Karl Kapusta (tech), Ron Nitz (business) • We are not staffed 24/7, 8/5, or even regular hours. We try to accommodate and respond as best we can. • Steve is half-time, working usually 0630-0830, 1430-1630 PST, but often taking calls whenever

28. How you can help HiSeasNet • Learn about the gear and how to troubleshoot • Use the resources we provide (manuals, web, etc.) • Be patient if we don’t get back to you right away • Humor us if we ask you a dumb question…we have reasons for asking seemingly strange questions • Tell us about your successes and cool projects you have seen that use HiSeasNet • Install a terminal server for your ACU and modem • We need feedback, too! • Tell us what you need. Tell us what you want. • Help us collect the resources you need to work well with HiSeasNet

29. HiSeasNet future • Get the rest of the ships online (for those where it makes sense) • Build a better user community • Offer better training so users are more successful operating their gear and minimizing downtime • Offer more coverage areas • Encourage more real-time data returns • What are we missing?