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Review of the Space Communications Program of Nasas Space Operations Mission Directorate
3
NASA Integrated Services Network
INTRODUCTION
The NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) project provides terrestrial networking for the agency. There are two separate networks: a mission network, controlled out of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), and an institutional network, controlled out of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). NISN does not provide or manage the local on-site networks at the various NASA centers.
The budget for NISN is $94 million per year. This covers facility and circuit costs, as well as a workforce composed of 25 civil service employees and about 250 contractors. The primary NISN workforce is located at GSFC (13 civil service employees and about 40 contractors) and at MSFC (12 civil service employees and over 150 contractors) to operate the mission and institutional networks. NISN has a gateway at each of the other NASA centers, with a minimal staff typically consisting of a gateway technician and a customer service representative (CSR). A site’s CSR serves as the interface between institutional network users at that site and NISN personnel at MSFC.
NISN Goals
The high-level mission of NISN, as stated in the 2005 NISN project plan, is as follows:
Provide high-quality, reliable, secure, cost-effective telecommunications systems and services for mission control, science data handling, and program administration for NASA programs and facilities.1
An enterprise architecture (EA) is being established to ensure that information technology expenditures are aligned with agency strategic goals. NISN will use the EA structure to align NISN goals and services with those of its customers.
NISN Services
NISN provides wide-area network (WAN) services to support all the NASA mission directorates, all NASA centers and facilities, agency institutional activities, and individual projects and missions. According to the NISN project plan, standard services offered by NISN include video teleconferencing, voice teleconferencing, switched voice, mission voice, routed data, and intrusion detection.2 NISN custom services include dedicated data links, high-rate data/ video, integrated services digital network, international communications, security services, and various services to support NASA personnel in Russia. NISN also provides network integration and consulting services, including Domain Name System service for the agency, NASA directory service (X.500), communications management and information services, ad hoc communications service, and applications services.
The mission network is a closed network, used for transmission of flight-mission data between NASA ground stations and mission operations control centers. Accessibility to the mission network is tightly controlled, and the backbone consists primarily of dedicated circuits. In contrast, the institutional network is open, providing such services as email and access to the Internet. The rationale for maintaining two separate networks is the criticality of real-time mission data. Consequently, the reliability and availability requirements are more stringent for the mission network than for the institutional network. For example, the amount of time targeted for problem resolution on the institutional network is 4 hours, whereas on the mission network it is 2 hours— and it is 20 minutes if a real-time mission is involved. However, the most significant difference in requirements for the two networks is the requirement that the mission network must be “frozen” for a period of time before and during a mission, meaning that the network configuration is not to be
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Review of the Space Communications Program of Nasas Space Operations Mission Directorate
altered during that time (e.g., no network upgrades are allowed, and no changes can be made to any network services). This is done to ensure that users will have a stable network platform to support their missions.
NISN Customers
NISN customers include all NASA centers and NASA headquarters, most flight mission programs and projects, other networks for space communication (the Space Network, Ground Network, and Deep Space Network), NASA contractors, NASA international partners, academia, and other government agencies.
The mission and institutional networks serve different sets of customers. Customers of the mission network are NASA missions; key customers include the Space Shuttle, Space Station, and Earth and space science missions. Since the institutional network supports more general NASA activities, the customer base is much broader. Specific customers include NASA missions (transmitting data to the users once it has reached the ground), employees at the various NASA centers, and NASA’s academic and international partners.
ASSESSMENT
NISN is fundamentally an operational organization, providing terrestrial networking services to the agency. Hence, any review of the NISN component of the SOMD space communications program must be based on customer assessment. In the conduct of this review the committee spoke with customers of the mission network and the institutional network, as well as NISN employees responsible for the operation of both networks. The committee also obtained copies of various documents that govern project activities and responsibilities, such as the NISN project plan3 and various customer agreements.4
The committee spoke with several customers of the NISN networks during site visits to NASA’s GSFC, MSFC, and Johnson Space Center (JSC). At GSFC the committee spoke with NISN personnel affiliated with the mission network control room, customers from the Science Mission Directorate, and space communications personnel who interface with mission personnel to develop evolving mission communications requirements. These discussions included representatives from two space science missions: the Hubble Space Telescope and GLAST (Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope) and two Earth observation missions: Aura and Aqua. The committee also spoke with the Earth Science Mission Operations network manager, who indicated to the committee that his group is responsible for about half of the NISN mission network requirements.5 The discussions probed interactions between space communications representatives and science missions throughout the mission process, as Hubble, Aura, and Aqua are all operational missions, while GLAST has not yet been launched. At JSC the committee spoke with representatives from the Space Station Program and the Shuttle Program, two major users of SOMD space communications facilities. At MSFC the committee spoke with some institutional network customers, as well as NISN personnel in charge of various aspects of the institutional network, e.g., advanced technology, security, video-teleconferencing, and customer service. The committee spoke both with civil service employees and with contractors during all three of these site visits. At GSFC the committee toured the mission network control room, and at MSFC the committee toured the institutional network control facilities.
Formulation of the Project Plan
Project Objectives
The customer-focused nature of NISN is reflected in the project objectives stated above. According to the NISN project plan, the goals and objectives of NISN are consistent with NASA’s strategic plan, as “the NISN network resource provides the means for the NASA Mission Directorates to fulfill the NASA agency strategic goals of Strategic Management, Delivery of Aerospace products and capabilities, and the generation and communication of knowledge between NASA and other agencies and institutes in the United States and International Partners.”6 In addition, NISN objectives clearly support the overall goals of the SOMD space communications program goals.
Project Deliverables
Customers of the mission network at GSFC indicated a high level of satisfaction with services provided by NISN, as well as the Space Network. Space communications personnel (including NISN personnel) work closely with mission personnel throughout the mission process, from mission inception through launch and operations, to ensure that mission communication requirements are met. The GSFC space communications personnel explained their procedure for interaction with mission personnel. Several agreements document the process. They include a detailed mission requirements document, a network operations support plan, and a project service-level agreement, which is the defining document that governs the relationship between NISN and the mission. Specified in these documents are the requirements NISN is to meet for both voice and routed data services, along with start and stop dates for each identified service. Once a mission becomes operational, daily discrepancy reports identify any problems. Each problem is assigned a discrepancy report number, and the problem is tracked to closure. Most discrepancy reports are closed within the day.
The process summarized above reflects close coordination between mission personnel and the communications
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Review of the Space Communications Program of Nasas Space Operations Mission Directorate
team from the inception of a mission, so that communications requirements are well integrated into the planning process. All customers that the committee interviewed agreed that the process works well and that they are satisfied with the services delivered by NISN.
Requirements for the institutional network are more general, because of the open nature of the network. NISN maintains a memorandum of understanding with each NASA center, which specifies services to be provided to that center. As previously noted, the customer service representative at each site is the interface between institutional network users at that site and NISN personnel at MSFC.
Performance Metrics
The NISN project plan specifies key performance indicators that are used to evaluate NISN services. These indicators include standard performance parameters such as network reliability and availability, as well as management-oriented performance indicators such as percentage of time that security incidents are resolved within 2 hours. Quantitative goals are specified for each performance indicator; if satisfied, these goals would ensure excellent service to the customer and excellent value for the agency. The complete table is available in the NISN project plan.7
NISN personnel within the mission network control room at GSFC monitor the performance of the network on a 24-hours-per-day/7-days-per-week (24/7) basis and have direct access to the service providers. A circuit map provides the means for a quick visual check on the status of the links. When an operator sees that there is a degradation of service on the link, he calls the service provider and the problem is addressed immediately.
The institutional network is also monitored 24/7 at MSFC. There are redundant control facilities at MSFC. In case of severe weather, such as a tornado watch or warning, a bunker-like control facility will accommodate a reduced staff to ensure that the network remains operational. A further option for maintaining operation of the institutional network is off-site telephone capabilities, including the ability to manage the network from GSFC. This careful planning for contingencies heightens the availability of the institutional network, which is vital to the everyday functioning of the agency.
Review Mechanisms
Numerous reviews of NISN are conducted throughout the year. Some are internal to the NISN project or the SOMD space communications program, and others are conducted with customers. The NISN project plan provides a complete list;8 a summary is included below. This National Research Council committee review is apparently the first external review of NISN.
Internal NISN reviews include daily meetings to discuss network outages, weekly staff meetings, monthly financial and contract reviews, monthly status reports to the SOMD space communications program, monthly reviews of requests for changes to policies and processes, and annual reviews to map NISN services to customer needs and to plan future directions.
Reviews with customers include annual reviews of requirements and budgets; quarterly video teleconferences to brief customers on ongoing NISN activities and on new and modified services, and to solicit customer feedback; and an annual customer forum. These customer forums, typically attracting about 250 attendees, provide a valuable opportunity for customers to interact with NISN and with each other. Customers of both the mission and the institutional networks can share their experiences, compare their networking requirements, listen to presentations of new technologies, meet in birds-of-a-feather sessions, learn about updates or changes to NISN policy and processes, or just meet with NISN team members.
Connections to the Broader Community
NISN leverages developments within the commercial networking community. The circuits for both the mission network and the institutional network are provided commercially via the U.S. General Services Administration’s Federal Technology Service contracting mechanism. This strategy of using the federal government contracting mechanism ensures the best possible price for NASA, since under Federal Technology Service regulations vendors cannot charge lower prices to any non-governmental entity than the prices quoted in their government bids. Currently AT&T provides the mission network, and Qwest recently won a contract to provide an upgraded institutional network (the WAN replacement network). The mission network is undergoing a technology upgrade this year, with AT&T replacing some obsolete equipment at no charge to NASA. This indicates a relationship that is beneficial to NISN.
NISN maintains a small civil service staff. Contractors perform the majority of the work, with the skeleton civil service staff retaining the management and decision-making responsibilities. The civil service staff sets policy, determines network requirements, architects the network, and monitors contractor activities; contractors operate the network. Although there are multiple contractor companies, both contractors and civil service employees at GSFC and MSFC assured the committee that all NISN employees work together as a unified team. NISN civil service and UNITeS (Unified NASA Information Technology Services is the name of the primary NISN contract) contractor personnel appear to work in close partnership, and the UNITeS performance rating for each 6-month period has consistently been “excellent.”9 According to NISN management at MSFC, any issues that arise are resolved immediately, precluding the need to be included in the 3- or 6-month reporting structure.
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Review of the Space Communications Program of Nasas Space Operations Mission Directorate
Finding: Further outsourcing for the NASA Integrated Services Network appears to be infeasible, without negatively impacting the project, since network circuits are already provided commercially and the civil service staff is minimal.
Methodology
NISN project activities appear to be carefully planned and executed. There is a well-defined process for NISN personnel (as is true for space communications personnel in general) to work with mission personnel over the course of mission development and operation, to determine communication requirements and to ensure that these requirements are fulfilled after the mission is launched. The mission network is monitored on a continual basis. Trouble tickets are typically resolved within a single day. If mission requirements change, communication requirements are revised accordingly.
Due to continuing interactions throughout all phases of a mission, there appears to be an excellent relationship between space communications and mission staff. There are regularly scheduled opportunities for customers to provide input into NISN project planning. The annual NISN customer forum is a major such opportunity. Customer feedback during the forum is a critical element in establishing NISN priorities and enhancing service offerings.
Also, according to the NISN project plan, NISN annually reviews existing customer requirements and solicits future requirements from NASA centers, programs/projects, and mission directorates. Finally, NISN maintains a memorandum of agreement with each center outlining the management and negotiation of requirements levied from NISN to centers, and from centers to NISN.
Risk management is an important element of the NISN project. The following categories of risk are identified in the NISN project plan:10
Cost,
Schedule,
Human capital, and
Technical.
Risks to the NISN project are managed according to priority. The highest-priority activities are providing and maintaining network connectivity. Lower-priority activities include upgrading equipment and conducting evaluations of emerging technologies. In the event of a budget shortfall, the lower-priority activities will be affected first.
According to the NISN project plan, processes and tools used for identifying, tracking, controlling, and reporting NISN risks are specified in the MSFC Office of the Chief Information Officer Organizational Work Instruction ISO1-OWI-008 for Information Technology Risk Management.
NISN has a small advanced technology activity, staffed with approximately 2.5 employees. New technologies are evaluated and prototyped in the laboratory prior to possible deployment on the operational networks. The network testbed for this work includes laboratories at MSFC, GSFC, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Glenn Research Center, and Ames Research Center. Since only a few of these laboratories are funded by NISN, this activity is heavily dependent on the mutual interest of and cooperation from other groups.
As a further complication, in the past NISN focused on evaluation and prototyping of future technologies in the 3-to 4-year time frame, relying on the NASA Research and Education Network (NREN) group to investigate longer-range technology development. Over the past couple of years the NREN focus has shifted to supporting the Columbia supercomputing facility at NASA Ames Research Center. The resulting gap in technology evaluation within the agency might be problematic. A major customer of the mission network indicated his concern about this issue when he informed the committee of the “need to keep NREN or some cutting-edge, state-of-the-industry, group active and engaged with NISN.”11
Finding: The advanced technology prototyping and evaluation activities within NISN are limited, in terms of both manpower and testing facilities.
Recommendation: NASA should reevaluate the role of the advanced technology effort within NISN, to determine whether activities in this area should be increased to alleviate the gap left by the NASA Research and Education Network’s changing role. If so, additional funding would likely be required for more personnel and expanded testbed facilities.
NISN management indicated that NISN would conduct more technology studies, such as a study of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), if funding were available. However, safety and mission success is the highest priority. High priority is also given to continuance of routine operations and data delivery, including provision of ongoing services and payment of circuit and maintenance costs. In the event of a budget reduction, lower priorities would include new initiatives, service improvements (e.g., replacement of obsolete equipment), and technology evaluation.
Overall Capabilities
Facilities and personnel seem adequate to accomplish NISN project objectives, as evidenced by the enthusiastic support for NISN on the part of the mission customers interviewed by the committee at all three NASA sites. The committee met with several of the NISN civil service employees; they all seemed competent in their areas of responsibility. In addition, the mix of civil service employees and contractors seems to work well.
NISN is able to attract candidates with experience when
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Review of the Space Communications Program of Nasas Space Operations Mission Directorate
there are open positions, according to employees at GSFC. In addition, new NISN employees at GSFC must satisfactorily complete a certification process before they can conduct critical mission-network control-room functions by themselves, further ensuring quality service from NISN.
The customers that were interviewed by the committee uniformly expressed satisfaction with the services provided by space communications personnel, including NISN. For example, customers said that network reliability is good, that problems are relatively infrequent, and that when problems do arise they are identified immediately and are resolved rapidly. The committee heard no substantive customer complaints.
NISN is currently upgrading both the mission network and the institutional network. The mission network operates at a lower bandwidth than the institutional network and typically lags in technology. Currently the mission network backbone consists primarily of multiple T1 (1.5 megabits per second) links and some DS3 (45 megabits per second) links. The institutional network provided by Qwest, which is to be completed by the end of 2006, will be a fiber-optic network with gigabit capacity.
The committee did see a significant amount of obsolete equipment during the site visits, including a room full of over-30-year-old patch panels for voice distribution on the mission network. According to NISN management, other NISN equipment has gone beyond “end-of-life” designation to “end-of-service” designation, meaning that the vendors will no longer even service the equipment. This problem apparently is the result of a poorly structured contract under the former Consolidated Space Operations Contract. NISN is well aware of the criticality of this situation and is currently working to upgrade this equipment in a prioritized manner subject to funding constraints. For example, NISN is currently enhancing voice capabilities for the mission network under the Mission Operations Voice Enhancement project. In addition AT&T is upgrading switching equipment in the mission network at no charge to NASA (as mentioned above), because the current equipment is so obsolete that it is more cost-effective for AT&T to replace it rather than continue to maintain it.
Finding: The problem of having NISN equipment that is no longer serviceable is being resolved by replacing outdated equipment as funding allows.
Recommendation: NASA should structure future NISN support contracts to ensure that critical equipment is updated in an ongoing manner, with the minimum requirement being that equipment will be replaced before vendors cease maintenance.
The NISN mission network is also required to support some “legacy” protocols for handling data. In particular, 4800-bit NASCOM data blocks (devised as a proprietary protocol several decades ago to support NASA space missions) must be encapsulated in Internet Protocol packets for transmission. The ramifications of these requirements to support legacy protocols are unclear. During its site visit to Johnson Space Center, the committee was advised that JSC is in the process of eliminating all need for the 4800-bit NASCOM data blocks from their missions.
Finding: NISN continues to support legacy protocols instead of using only standard Internet protocols that would facilitate interoperability.
Recommendation: NASA should conduct an agency-wide study to determine trade-offs in continuing to support legacy protocols versus updating individual mission equipment to support Internet protocols.
The NISN institutional network serves the daily communications activities of everyone at all the NASA centers and hence operates in a less controlled environment than does the mission network. A result can be that unexpected requirements are suddenly imposed on the network. For example, a decision to locate all e-mail servers at MSFC led to a surge in traffic in and out of MSFC. This decision had not been coordinated with NISN, resulting in a degradation of network performance.
As indicated throughout this chapter, the mission network and institutional network are two separate networks, each provided by a different vendor. These networks are currently separate because of differing user requirements. However, according to NISN management, the differences in requirements for reliability and availability between the two are becoming less important, since state-of-the-art network technologies are inherently very reliable. Apparently, the only remaining real difference is the need to “freeze” the mission network around mission launch and operation. Using state-of-the-art technologies, it might be possible to combine the two networks and still offer separate services by providing separate channels on the same network infrastructure, e.g., using separate wavelengths on a fiber-optic network, using Virtual Private Network technology, or using router technology. Using a single network infrastructure for the two networks might provide a more cost-effective solution to satisfying user needs.
Finding: NASA’s mission network has more stringent requirements for reliability and availability than does its institutional network. However, given the improvements inherent in state-of-the-art network technologies, any network with such technology will satisfy the more stringent of the two sets of requirements, so that it is not necessary to differentiate between the two networks with respect to this issue.
Recommendation: NASA should reevaluate the possibilities
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Review of the Space Communications Program of Nasas Space Operations Mission Directorate
for sharing a single network infrastructure for its mission network and institutional network.
NOTES
1. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) Project Plan, December 2005, p. 7.
2. NASA, NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) Project Plan, December 2005, p. 12.
3. NASA, NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) Project Plan, December 2005.
4. Examples of customer agreements include memoranda of agreement at the NASA center level, and detailed mission requirements documents and project service-level agreements at the mission level.
5. Knoble, Gordon, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Network Manager for Earth Science Mission Operations, discussion during the NRC Committee to Review NASA’s Space Communications Program site visit to GSFC, March 13, 2006.
6. NASA, NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) Project Plan, December 2005, p. 6.
7. NASA, NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) Project Plan, December 2005, pp. 38-39.
8. NASA, NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) Project Plan, December 2005, p. 45.
9. Paschall, Elizabeth, NISN Project Manager, personal communication, April 7, 2006.
10. NASA, NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) Project Plan, December 2005, p. 42.
11. Knoble, Gordon, NASA GSFC Network Manager for Earth Science Mission Operations, presentation during NRC Committee to Review NASA’s Space Communications Program site visit to GSFC, March 13, 2006.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
space communications
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