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Paper: An Effective, Low-Cost Architecture for Remote Observing and Distributed Data Analysis Over the WAN
Volume: 184, Third Advances in Solar Physics Euroconference: Magnetic Fields and Oscillations
Page: 324
Authors: Messerotti, M.; Otruba, W.; Hanslmeier, A.
Abstract: We describe the architecture and the performance of a low-cost software-hardware system, which allows common work and remote observing to be carried out over both the Local (LAN) and the Wide Area Network (WAN) in the frame of a remotely distributed working group. The system consists in a set of Personal Computers (PC) of the Pentium class running Microsoft Windows 95 or NT 4 and the free application NetMeeting 2.1. The physical location of the machines was Trieste, Kanzelhoehe and Graz respectively. A series of tests was performed to ascertain the usability of such a configuration for scientific applications. In particular, we tested remote joint work as software development and data analysis (with particular regard to IDL applications), data transfer, remote observing by simulating access to the Kanzelhoehe Vacuum Telescope, and audio/video communications. As expected, all such applications are quite demanding from the point of view of both local hardware performances and required bandwidth. Despite of that, the system proved to be an effective and practical tool, low-cost and easy to set up due to its full integrability with the above Operating Systems (O/S).
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