Calar Alto Computer Department News for 2008

We can speak about this year mainly in terms of Network. 

Although other jobs were carried out, the main tasks during this year were starting all works in order to improve both external and external communications. 

Internal Network 

The first problem we found was the fact that the fiber optic cables, together with the transmitters, were not appropiate for the distances between buildings and for the bandwidth we wanted. In this aspect, we have starting replacing old fiber optics cables by the appropiate ones, and begin to use 1310 nm transceivers. There is still lot of job to be done, but the critical part is finished. 

We also decided to replace old switches and build an STP ring between main buildings: 2.2, 3.5, laboratory top plant (SOR) and laboratory down plant (Servers room). For achieving this, we bought Dell gigaswitches with 1310 nm fiber transceivers. We have also bought one more gigaswitch for Hotel network and another one for 1.23m network. I have to say here that the whole hotel network was changed, and now its communications are at the same rate as the rest of the observatory. 

As you can observe from next figure, the main ring  has a 2 Gbps bandwidth. Together, main buildings have direct 1 Gbps connection everywhere (on any TP connector). 

External Network

In this point, we have started jobs that will allow us having a symmetrical 100 Mbps link with the University (actual one has a 8 Mbps symmetrical bandwith), The equipment is already prepared for a 200 Mbps bandwidth. Moving from 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps will be carried out as soon as CICA install a new line from Almería to Sevilla. 

Probably, we'll start transmitting at 100 Mbps early next year (January or February)

RACEv2

Until September of this year, we had the Medium Level RACEv1 mail quality certification. Since September, we have the Advanced Level RACEv2 mail quality certification which is given by RedIRIS, the Spanish National Research and Educational Network.

Other actuations

Since beginning of the year, we have a new and much more secure entrance machine, based on the same principles as the old one, but now running Linux

A global security monitor project is now running and giving very interesting results

The web server is now totally new, faster, more reliable and more secure

We have contracted the Meteosat services, so now we are receiving Satellite images every 15 minutes. Those images can only be seen within our network. 

It has been prepared a computer that can replace any of the instrumentation computers (except Laica and Omega 2000) in case of need

Finally a new spare machine for Omega 2000 is in preparation with Solaris 10.