N-Wave

Completing the N-Wave connectivity project in Alaska

GlobalNOC manages the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s science network, N-Wave. In fact, since 2010, we have provided advanced networking services for more than $47 million in contracts from NOAA.

In 2021, our N-Wave engineers wrapped up an important project assisting as NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and N-Wave partnered to initiate a new Alaska Aggregation project. The goal was to provide higher bandwidth and lower-cost connectivity in support of all NOAA science and operations in the region.

The project eases the sharing of infrastructure and costs for the most expensive portion of the connectivity—the circuits between Alaska and the contiguous United States (CONUS). Multiple NOAA Line Offices currently maintain separate circuits from their Alaska sites to CONUS, and only some of those connections offer built-in redundancy. The aggregation approach provides diverse N-Wave connectivity to CONUS that can be leveraged by all Line Offices with operations in Alaska, offering all participants the benefit of redundant, high-speed connectivity.

From April to November, there were more than 35 N-Wave installs of all types—transport and services—many of which required an N-Wave engineer to travel. These have ranged from locations in Fairbanks, Alaska, to Lakeland, Florida, and many points in between.

N-Wave installations in support of marine sanctuaries

One N-Wave engineer finished work for the Scituate, Massachusetts, installation supporting the National Ocean Service’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS). He installed a provider edge router, an out of band management router, and a perfSONAR server. Successful installations like these come about thanks to our team’s detailed planning and logistics, which allow them to perform a professional installation and work through any unexpected issues while onsite.