medin@cincsac.arc.nasa.gov (Milo S. Medin) (06/19/91)
In article <1991Jun13.145538.9960@infonode.ingr.com>, hychejw@infonode.ingr.com (Jeff W. Hyche) writes: ... |> HOW |> NASA/Spacelink reaches the Internet via the Southeastern Universities Research |> Association Network (SURAnet), a regional network affiliated with National |> Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). |> |> FUTURE |> NASA/Spacelink's next expansion phase will increase several elements of the |> system, including additional storage for images from NASA's observatories. |> NASA/Spacelink's Internet connectivity will be upgraded to offer more |> simultaneous TELNET sessions and FTP file transfers. |> Not quite. MSFC is not connected via SURANet, but in fact the NASA Science Internet (NSI), which connect MSFC and the most of the NASA Centers and NASA Science facilities in the US and abroad. We fully cooperate with the other agencies in the US who do networking, so by and large, all our sites are fully routable to the Internet as a whole, though some sites implement access controls locally for security reasons. No NASCOM or mission critical communications facilities are interconnected to the science networks, so don't even try breaking into the mission control facilities; they are fully isolated from the science and research communications systems. Also, the Spacelink computers do not speak TCP/IP per se, but are connected via async RS232 through terminal servers, and that's why they don't grok FTP. At least that's the way it used to work. Assuming they can get TCP/IP support for their DG system running AOS, then you should be able to get full internet services. Most of the SpaceLink data is available for FTP from ames.arc.nasa.gov, which archives a lot of NASA stuff. You can also access it via Telenet, if you have an access code and password (direct Telenet access to NASA X.25 resources is restricted in most cases). Thanks, Milo Medin