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Re: IDD



Robert Dewey wrote:
> 
> Dear Anne Wilson,
> 
>     I sent a letter to Dave Fulker several months ago [about 7 or 8
> months actually] asking about IDD access.
> I told him how I am an 11th grader who lives just north of Detroit MI,
> and I requested IDD access. However; I was denied access due to
> uncertainty in my internet connection, which is a cable modem. I told
> him how I have NAWIPS/GEMPAK setup and I needed the data, so he
> contacted other Unidata Support members, and they got a list of
> FTP locations for data.
> 
>     What I did was setup cron scripts [~2 dozen scripts!] to get data at
> differint times. My PC [running RedHat 7.2] has been running for the
> full 5 months, non-stop, collecting data from FTP servers. I beleive I
> may be overloading the servers though, with such large data requests,
> because the servers often go down. So, obviously the FTP method isnt
> working to great as of now.
> 
>     So, what I wanted to know is if I could get connected to the IDD and
> recieve the NOAAport, or other FREE streams, as a "client" or "leaf
> node" who only requests/receives data but doesnt send it out? This would
> seem to eliminate the questions of whether or not my internet connection
> is capable of sending data. Is this method possible, or do
> ALL IDD participants HAVE to serve data? I wouldnt need a failover site,
> becuase I would just activate the cronjobs when data is down on IDD.
> With that said, I was hoping there were a site or a couple of sites, who
> would be willing to feed me data. Below are the specific datasets which
> I am MOST interested in:
> 
> +NEXRAD
> +SATELLITE
> +TEXT DATA (watches and warnings)
> +SFC and UPPER AIR DATA
> +MODEL DATA
> +NLDN DATA (I seen in on the rap.ucar.edu FTP, but I quit downloading
> from them do to server problems)
> 
> Thanks for ALL the help I have received over the months!
> Robert D. Dewey
> March 14, 2002

Hi Robert,

First, my apologies for the delay in responding to your request.  I
needed to make some inquiries.  

Regarding participating in the IDD, it is not the case that sites must
serve data in order to receive it.  However, we do have a policy to
support institutions, not individuals.  Is it possible that you could
make a connection with a nearby university?  We have several sites in
Michigan, see http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/idd/sitelist.html for
a list or participating sites.  If you are in the vicinity of one of our
sites we could help you with an introduction.  Let me know.

Most of the data you listed above is freely available.  NLDN, however,
is proprietary - it is made available (not through us) for educational
use only and is not to be relayed.  I'm not sure whether you would
qualify or not.  Model output and radar data is very voluminous - it's
probably too much to ask a site to relay that entire volume to you.  
But, a subset may be doable.

Anne
-- 
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Anne Wilson                     UCAR Unidata Program            
address@hidden                 P.O. Box 3000
                                  Boulder, CO  80307
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Unidata WWW server       http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
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