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4. Connectivity to Network 5. 10BaseT, thinnet?
There are two basic categories of science users - those at the Pole for a few weeks, and those
present for a year or more. The needs of both must be considered. The short-term users have
limited time and resources with which to adapt to differences between facilities available at
South Pole and those at their home institution. The long term users have sufficient time to
more fully take advantage specialized resources at South Pole. In addition, each of these
categories may have both expert and novice users, having rather different support
requirements. The largest numbers of users, have been the short-term summer scientists.
However, there has always been resident research groups such as (currently) CARA and
AMANDA, NOAA, and (previously) NOAA, USGS, and Bartol.
Investigators will continue to bring their increasingly more powerful computers to the station.
This permits the investigator to have much better control over the software and hardware
configuration for that computer. In addition, little time is available for software development
in the short summer season, making centralized computing at the station somewhat
impractical.
Station computers do provide valuable services to the research environment. These include
mail and name services, bulk data spooling and archiving, print services, remote access,
access for personnel not having personal computers, and parts sparing.
Mail services have not evolved to the state where they are particularly convenient for
portable computers. The route tables, addressing paradigms, and naming conventions are not
sufficiently dynamic to deal conveniently with computers that change physical location
frequently. Among the better alternatives is to telnet to the investigators' home computer and
providing mail addresses on a station computer at south pole station. It is often difficult to
remotely access mail on personal computer-based mail systems.
Recommendations:
1. Familiar computing environments and support
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