martins_chc_nz

Member since: Nov 4th, 2008

martins_chc_nz's Latest Comments

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Recent Comments:

Bittorrent banned from Antarctica, and boy, are the penguins pissed (Download Squad)

Aug 19th 2009 6:08PM This is not new news at all.

P2P has long been banned by the USAP enterprise rules of behaviour as has any nefarious use of bandwidth. This is about bandwidth and the huge cost of getting it in and out of Antarctica...

There are NO wires to Antarctica guys.. It's all satellite which costs a bomb. The USAP is not an ISP and we provide bandwidth exclusively for science.

A mac address is collected and retained as part of the security screen that EVERY laptop must undergo prior to connection on the USAP network. This list is maintained by net-ops guys as is the ability to completely disconnect ANY offending equipment from the network. New technology IS in place to block whatever traffic we feel necessary to block in order to avoid contention.

The point is also that P2P software is prone to abuse and generally bandwidth intensive. Its not just P2P stuff, also "frowned upon" is any activity that involves file sharing, streaming media, downloading music, podcasts etc.

The us government own this network and provide it at huge cost to support the ENTIRE research community in Antarctica.

It is NOT a pipe to provide entertainment services of ANY kind. read iTunes, streaming video etc.. Take your own DVD's and music with you, dont use our network for that garbage.

There are up to 2000 people in antarctica over summer and they have to share approx 13Mb of bandwidth....

This requires serious bandwidth management when you consider that most science projects involve sending gob loads of data back to universities and research organisations. This traffic must always take priority.

If you dont like the rules that are in place to ensure everyone gets a fair crack at bandwidth, then perhaps you should arrange your own internet feed to the ice. Im sure you will very quickly find that the costs are quite prohibitive....

Intelsat retires Marisat-F2 satellite after 32 years of service (Engadget)

Nov 4th 2008 3:51PM We received a communication directly from IntelSat last month advising of this decision...

They advised.....

"Due to a recent change in the health of the telemetry and command subsystems Intelsat General has determined that it can no longer SAFELY operate the satellite through 2010 as previously hoped"

In other words Id take it that they have basically lost control of the satellite

Marty
IT Specialist
US Antarctic Program

Intelsat retires Marisat-F2 satellite after 32 years of service (Engadget)

Nov 4th 2008 3:46PM Yes there are alternatives. Broadband coverage continues with 2 main satellites. the GOES-3 and TDRS-F1.

Unfortunately with the demise of MARISAT-F2 the broadband window at pole decreases from hh:mm ~12:35 to ~10:32 per day...

Marty
IT Specialist
US Antarctic Program