Data-hungry applications via the “limited-capability” satellite network

Maritime CIO Forum Rotterdam, 18th Nov 2014

Ir. Peter Van de Venne Director IT, Spliethoff

Agenda

- Bandwidth a precious commodity - Crew - How has traffic evolved? - E-mail revisited - Telephony - Virtual servers - Sensors - Conclusions - Future expectations

Fleet

Total Fleet >100 vessels (about 15 persons/ship)

Always-on Internet - Reasons

- Communication between ship/shore accelerated - Downloading manuals - Port details, Cargo details - Water heights - Weather and ice charts - Less printing of private e-mail

- Private e-mail (gmail, msn, …) - Chatting with home/friends - Electronic banking - Home newspapers - Surfing

-Supporting captain with PC problems -Remote install of updated software

Business:

Crew:

IT:

Crew

Business

IT

Bandwidth a precious commodity

- Substantial bandwidth cost (airtime + initial cost) - Discussions on what crew contribution would be fair and how to enforce it.

- Some crew members ate all bandwidth , leaving nothing for their collegues

⇒ Compression ⇒ Organize charging ⇒ Organize fair distribution Middleware

VSAT setup

•Ventilation

•Antenna control unit

•iDirect satellite modem

•Patch panel

•Ethernet switch

•INFINITY BOX

•UPS power

•Circuit breakers

Crew Policy Internet

• Get 300 MB/month free allowance (equals about 600 MB before compression) • 0.20 USD/MB above 300 MB allowance • Buy 5 – 100 USD (from leisure of their cabins) (infinitely valid) • Bring Your Own Device (no company provided PC’s) • No further restrictions (skype, etc ok) (as long as legal) • Friendly hints for controlling data usage • Unlimited internet access on special projects (waiting hours)

Crew: Infinity dashboard

Simulate a mobile device (less bandwidth)

The user can open the firewall on demand

Crew change integration

How to get crew changes automagically to ship? Webservices: - RegisterUser(…) - Signoff(UserID) - BuyCreditsFromShip(UserID,nn USD) No extra work for captain. Crew can buy extra (never expires) Fair Charging based on free monthly + additional buy on board (never expires)

0.0 20.0 40.0 60.0 80.0 100.0 120.0

Happy DeltaMaasgracht

DynamograchtDonaugrachtDeltagrachtMolengracht

DanzigergrachtDolfijngracht

Happy DynamicHappy Diamond

TransporterDijksgracht

Happy RangerHappy Rover

DiamantgrachtTracer

MinervagrachtTraveller

Happy SkyDamgracht

Happy DoverTramper

Happy RiverSuomigracht

GB

Data Usage

August 2011 8.5 GB/vessel on average

February 2014 21.8 GB/vessel on average

February 2014 – source ITC Global Portal

VSAT monthly total cost

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

O5 oct 2010 15-Dec-13

Total cost/vessel

-Cost has gone up, but bandwidth has gone up from 23 to 256 kbps CIR !

15-Dec-13

Monthly airtime

Monthly infinity

Crew returns/month/ship

Repair (estimate)

Write off of investments

Less phone calling cost (businessVoIP)

-Crew revenues pay for the infinity box

83% Crew 17% Business

Snapshot from Infinity interface

Crew vs Business

Business - Crew

How do we make sure the business doesn’t drown in crew traffic?

QoS, order (most important first): VLAN IP Range Ports Description

9 172.27.xxx.0/24 VoIP 14 172.29.xxx.0/24 Sensor 11 172.25.xxx.0/24 Business

TCP 3389 + 5900 - RDP/VNC : Remote Access, shore>ship TCP 1433 + 445 - SQL TCP 80 + 443 - HTTP/HTTPS TCP 110 + 25 - POP/SMTP TCP 21 - FTP - All other

12 172.26.xxx.0/24 Crew 13 172.28.xxx.0/24 Tutor (students)

Quality of Service (QoS) :

Implemented in the Infinity Box

Compression

Compression in reality even better: + Advertisement reduction + Local http caching + Local DNS caching

Snapshot from Infinity interface

Netto 2.2 => 256 kbps ‘feels like’ 512 kbps

Uplink - Downlink

Uplink Downlink kbps kbps

Original situation (symmetrical) 128 128 Current situation 128 256 Next step ? 128 384

22%

78%

Average Up/Down

Uplink

Downlink

Notifications: • Your message has been delivered • >5 MB => Your message has NOT been delivered (rejected) • Your mail has been put on hold until the connection is restored (max 5 days). • The internet connection has been out of service for more than 5 days

=> discarded

E-mail revisited

Via VSAT e-mail cost is peanuts Via backup FBB/IOP still costly => direct mail with more intelligent control needed

Telephony (VoIP)

• Increases cohesion between office and fleet

• Free of charge

• The quality of the voice is very good

• Phones can be placed anywhere on the vessel’s network

Office staff and vessels can call each other internally (4-digit number)

Technical notes:

- SIP connection between office Mitel PBX and Infinity VoIP

- Siemens DECT VoIP phones on the vessel

- Separate Voice VLAN

Virtualization Environment

Infinity Virtual machines:

• VSAT provider can remotely support the ship’s satellite systems

• Virtual vessel PC

Centralised

Database

Server

Centralised

Web/Application

Server

(planned)

Sensors

Sensors currently connected : - Fuel flow (IFO, MDO, Boiler) - Torque (propulsion power, shaft generator) - GPS (position + speed over ground + direction) - Speedlog (speed through water) - Wind meter - Crane control (Huisman; via sensor VLAN)

Standard interfaces…? NMEA, pulse, Volt, Ampere, modbus, … Big Data …: datalogger reduced from 1x/min to 1x/15 min; still a lot of data Not online, but via MS SQL database sync Combined with weather routing (Meteo Group SPOS)

Conclusions

1) Crew : fair distribution + charging + administration in place 2) Average traffic has increased from 8 to 22 GB 3) Compression makes 256 kbps ‘feel like’ 512 kbps 4) QoS makes sure that 17% Business doesn’t drown in 83% Crew traffic 5) Direct e-mail now possible, including sophisticated control 6) Telephony brings fleet and office closer together 7) Sensor LAN now actively used

Future

Expand always-on Internet to 22 more vessels (128/256 or 128/384) Hunger for more bandwidth will remain Shift from infrastructure to applications:

web-based (on-board) applications (vessel cloud + sync to office) fuel saving (interpreting sensor data) renewed arrival/departure/noon/bunker apps (no longer messages) incident reporting app (solving large file attachment sync challenge)

how to mix map layers: private company info+weather+ECDIS? ECDIS directly connected to sensor VLAN Video (tele-medicine + tele-maintenance)

Questions / Issues

Thank you !