The NOAA Network Baseline Project

Jerry Janssen
Network Operations Center, OAR


NOAA’s diverse organizations have a wide range of Internet and Intranet requirements including various levels of security, reliability, and bandwidth. As these requirements continue to evolve, each organization builds network connections to meet its individual needs. This evolution has led to a complex system of interconnections that is constantly changing. For many years, there was no centralized effort to document this system of interconnections. This is largely because it required the cooperation of organizations that rarely work together. A few years ago the newly formed NOAA Network Advisory Technical Team recognized that a baseline of the national NOAA network would be critical to improving the reliability and cost efficiency of NOAA inter-campus connectivity. It would also be instrumental in building an efficient, cohesive, and reliable network infrastructure for NOAA in the future.

The NOAA Network Advisory Technical Team (NATT) is comprised of technical and managerial representatives from all NOAA organizations. Over the last few years the NATT, in close coordination with the Network Operation Centers located in Silver Spring MD and Boulder CO, have built a comprehensive NOAA network baseline. This baseline includes a drawing of the physical network connections, a logical network drawing, and a database of network addresses and circuit identifiers. This presentation will highlight the latest versions of the baseline documents and discuss the process by which the information was gathered. Questions and comments will be encouraged.