A team of CSIRO staff members has been in Singapore to start the installation of Investigator’s sophisticated computer network.

On the team was Ian Hawkes, Hugh Barker, Sean McInnes, Jerry Coppleman and Phillip Coles, who are specialists based in CSIRO’s Marine and Atmospheric Research Laboratories in Hobart.

RV Investigator's IT specialists

This amazing team, and a whole bunch of IT specialists, have designed an impressive network for the ship over the past 18 months.RV Investigator getting seriously wired

The computer network has several really important roles. Firstly it’s to collect data from a vast array of scientific equipment, from the CTDs, to the TRIAXUS, to the weather research radar. It’s also there to keep everyone safe via a system of cameras, which will enable the science operations to be viewed from a number of locations onboard, and it also keeps everyone connected to the rest of the world, via an impressive satellite communications system.RV Investigator getting seriously wired

How wired are we talking? Here are some stats on the onboard system, to wow you with:

  • 8 central servers
  • 30 cameras monitoring ship operations
  • 58 TB of central scientific storage (yes Terabytes!)
  • 100 telephones
  • 1,000 network outlets
  • The network is built on a fibre optic backbone with a 10 Gbps core switch, and 1 Gbps edge switches (wow!)
  • Investigator will have a 512kbps VSAT data link to shore for email, internet, voice, video, remote support services as well as enabling live science data transfer.

Impressed?

I am!