Content area
Full text
When Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists send a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) into the ocean depths, they use distributed computing technology to immediately view ocean-floor images. And, by extending a shipboard local-area network through the Internet, they now send those same images via satellite to other laboratories worldwide.
Leveraging the power of fiber-optic communications and Unix workstations, the scientists relay images from 20,000 feet below the ocean surface to a ship floating overhead. The Internet data feeds were tried for the first time this spring during an underwater survey in Mexico's Sea of Cortez, scientists here said.
Woods Hole was assisted by Electronic Data Systems Corp. in Plano, Texas, in extending the Internet links down to the ocean floor.
"We extended the Internet by realtime satellite link to the ship and down to the vehicle," explained W. Kenneth Stewart, head of Woods Hole's Deep Submergence Lab.
Using a technique called multicasting, the newly acquired data was broadcast to several sites around the world, he said. The images were broadcast in "near-real time" due to subsecond lags in processing the imaging signals, according...