Gone are the dark days when a yacht’s skipper had to rely on sightings of the stars to navigate from A to B. Nowadays, a blistering array of devices are on hand to provide a wealth of information. Technology is advancing at a great pace, noticeably in the field of computing, and ever more complex networks are being installed that interface and interact with the yachts´ on board systems.
Ship based networks are often compared to similar networks in shore based offices, however the differences between the two are important enough to be significant.
This article is about those differences.
A quick word - Data and Communications
Data is information, and communications is the means of passing that information from a start point to an end point. If an owner has the need to contact somebody onshore, this can be done via, for example, a satcom terminal. The communications portion is the satcom, the data is the message passed from one party to another.
It’s easy to understand the communications portion of this scenario; however, the data now being passed is a great deal more complex. This still doesn’t seem too far removed from what happens with home and office computers. What’s different is the way the communications are handled.
Let’s begin by examining land based office networks.
The Land Based Network
Two or more computers connected to each other and able to share resources such as files or printers can be said to be on a network. Most of us have at least one computer at home, so it’s easy to conceive how a simple network can be set up.
An office uses a more powerful computer with large storage space so that everyone’s files can be kept in one place (the server). By using a server based operating system, users are required to log on to the network in order to see these files. In this way, security can be applied so that users only see the files they are entitled to.
The advent of the Internet, often described as the most important development of modern times, allowed users to look for files on other computers by connecting to them via a telephone line. Companies leased high speed and high cost (always on lines) to stay permanently connected, and this is now within reach of the home user with low cost ADSL.
Email soon became the default communication method for many businesses and individuals, and office and home computing is now meshing many different forms of communications in to one platform - email from your phone is a good example.
The home user had to become savvier on the domestic pc, corporations handed that responsibility of running their networks to IT professionals. They are the ones with dark offices, and no-one really knows how to talk to them.
Leaving aside specialist fields, the main role of a systems administrator is managing users and keeping things running. Once a new system is installed, it can be left in place for years without the need for reconfiguration. And that’s where the differences begin when you compare that to yacht systems.
The Yacht Based Network
A yacht network will generally cater for fewer users than an office based one. However, that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to set up - the programs will all have to be configured the same way. It’s just that things can be run with possibly fewer functions. A good illustration of this is a Global Address Book - this is the directory of employee’s email addresses used by a company - this can sometimes be many tens of thousands of names. On a small boat network, it just isn’t needed. However, the server based email programme would still have the capacity for a global address book - it’s installed, but not used.
So the skills required by the engineer setting up the system on the boat need to be the same as the land based engineer. However, once installed, the system is in a state of constant change as a yacht moves around and reconfiguring the network is necessary.
Several yachts have the luxury of a high-speed ADSL line provided by the local telephone company while in port. Once at sea, the connection to the Internet (and therefore data) is made by a variety of different methods depending on the yacht’s location. Within range, GSM/GPRS is used, though the throughput is slow. Higher budget vessels can and do make use of 64k ISDN data on the Sat B, though the costs are high. New on the scene last year was the F77, giving both packet data and ISDN data, though again the cost is high. This year we have the Sea Tel 4003 VSAT with 256k/512k data. The boat arrives at its destination and can then connect via the port exchange or wireless network, getting much cheaper connections at reasonable speed.
Each time the connection method is changed, the basic way the network functions can also change. The nature of these connection devices means that they sometimes require quite a bit of troubleshooting to establish a link to allow data to flow.
This is where the corporate IT engineers get stuck. Because it is highly unlikely that they will have the slightest idea what a Sat B is, they will have no clue what to do if and when the connection fails. This is important, as many yacht owners have tried to have their corporate-based IT staff administer the boat network, a policy that is often doomed to failure as most of the equipment interfaced to the computer will be completely foreign. For example, there is no way they would understand how to check a NMEA input so that the vessel’s position appears on the chart plotter software.
Another difference in the corporate world is the way they set up their networks. Different computers, sometimes in different departments, can handle different functions. Company e-mail would be installed on one computer administered by one department, while another department would administer the routers that handle the network traffic.
As the scale is much smaller on yachts, the same devices are used, but often all will sit on the same platform. The requirement once again for the Marine-IT engineer is to have a very broad range of knowledge and the ability to set up, configure and troubleshoot a very diverse amount of data and communications equipment.
By: Neil Macdonald. Marine-IT Manager for the E3 Systems Group.
Before joining E3 Neil was a corporate IT Manager for Sunwing Hotel group.
For further information contact Neil on tel:+34 971 40 42 08/40 07 38 or email:info@e3s.com.