To accommodate extended WfH requirements due to Covid and a likely segue toward more telecommuting we need to investigate and if possible improve NRAO/NM's broadband access at the home.   

Federal Broadband specification is 25mbit/s down, 3mbit/s up.    Typical DSL from CenturyLink is 15mbit/s down, .5mbit/s up http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest.   Limited upload speed is detrimental to certain interactive services, particularly video conference.

Immediate: (1 week): Put together working team,  flesh out plan

  • Define problem(s) we want to solve,  e.g. do we want to back Socorro efforts to obtain broadband access or simply focus on ensuring minimum requirements for our staff
  • Purely internal focused on short and medium term, may overlap with broader cooperative group working with NMT, Socorro, et al
  • Establish working group (smallish 5 or so at most)  (Chris Langley, Matthew McCleary, Rick Lively, George Moellenbrock, Rachel Rosen, Josh Marvil, James Robnett)
    • Should have both geographic (e.g. Magdalena) and functional representatives (DMS, Electronics, VLA site etc) 

Short term:  (2-4 weels):   Ensure staff are efficiently using NRAO resources, characterize problem,  ramp up longer term projects

  • Audit available connectivity in Socorro and surrounding areas (CenturyLink, cable, SDC wireless, cell, DSOC WiFi etc) (done)
  • Poll users, get more detailed info as to provider, current bandwidth, stability, satisfaction etc
  • Develop internal 'how to improve your home network' style document (debug, best practices type doc)
  • Develop WfH clearing house web portal (useful NRAO wide) include home network doc plus pointers to SSH tunneling, VPN, VNC etc. (In progress Chris Clark, Mathew McCleary, Pat Murphy, Derek Hart, James Robnett)
  • Contact NMT, City of Socorro etc regarding interest in cooperative effort  (In Progress, James Robnett met with NMT, Heather Cochrane, Sanjay Bhatnagar, James Robnett met with City)

Medium term: (1 to 2 months): Self contained effort to ensure NRAO and staff home networks are working efficiently

  • Consider assisting staff with home network issues (e.g. purchase ADSL test meter, have staff test from external NID 
    • Possible electronics staff might be able to help ?
    • Should not require physical contact, test point is external to house.
  • Focus on fixing priority targets, i.e staff who should continue to work from home productively but who continue to have poor service 

Long term (1 to 24 months): Develop plan to work with local entities to expand (establish really) Socorro broadband access.


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