The Deep Impact Network Experiment Operations Center Monitor and Control System

The interplanetary overlay network (ION) software at JPL is an implementation of delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN) which has been proposed as an interplanetary protocol to support space communication. The JPL deep impact network (DINET) is a technology development experiment intended to increase the technical readiness of the JPL implemented ION suite. The DINET experiment operations center (EOC) developed by JPL's protocol technology lab (PTL) was critical in accomplishing the experiment. EOC, containing all end nodes of simulated spaces and one administrative node, exercised publish and subscribe functions for payload data among all end nodes to verify the effectiveness of data exchange over ION protocol stacks. A monitor and control system was created and installed on the administrative node as a multi-tiered Internet-based Web application to support the deep impact network experiment by allowing monitoring and analysis of the data delivery and statistics from ION. This monitor and control system includes the capability of receiving protocol status messages, classifying and storing status messages into a database from the ION simulation network, and providing Web interfaces for viewing the live results in addition to interactive database queries.