[vsnet-grb 29677] Status of recent problems with GCN-INTEGRAL connection

[Bacodine]

TO:  All GCN Notice recipient sites                    02 Sep 06
RE:  GCN and INTEGRAL CONNECTIVITY

If you do not receive INTEGRAL Notices, then you do not need to read this.

There are on-going problems with the connectivity between GCN and the
the INTEGRAL burst information server (aka IBAS).  This problem appears
to have started ~23 Aug 06.  It was not noticed until shortly after
the INTEGRAL burst GRB 060901 (I received a Circular about the burst
but not a Notice -- a couple other people noticed this lack as well).

Although the connection between GCN and IBAS appeared OK, no POINT_DIR
or TEST messages were being received.  Killing and restarting the GCN 
program did not establish a good link.  Since this problem happeded
once before (and it turned out to be a Goddard firewall issue), I used
a machine outside of Goddard to set up a "bridge" between GCN and IBAS.
This bridge changed the socket connection protocol from UDP to TCP/IP
(which was key to the firewall issue; and it then relayed the INTEGRAL
messages to GCN (changing the protocol and thus avoiding the firewall problem).
[Carlo Graziani (U Chicago) kindly provides this machine outside of GSFC
that allows this bridge and other outisde-of-Goddard testing activities.]

This worked for about 24 hours and then the POINTDIR messages (and presumably
anything else that might have been generated) stopped again.  This indicates
it is not a Goddard firewall issue this time.

I do not know what the problem is, but I am working to discover and solve it.
(Things are complicated because it is the weekend and system support people
here and at IBAS are not available.)  I will keep you posted.  (It is always
useful to check the GCN System Status wep page to see about this and any
future problem:  http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/sys_status.html; and on a broader
scale, check the "what's new" page: http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/whats_new.html .)

This problem affects only INTEGRAL-based notices.  The Swift, HETE, XTE, MILAGRO,
and IPN notices are all working fine (ie telemetry or messages are still being received
from these sources and are being distributed).

Sincerely,
Scott

Scott Barthelmy                      NASA-GSFC, Code 661, Greenbelt, MD   20771
PHONE:  301-286-3106                 (office)
PHONE:  301-346-3733                 (cell)
FAX:    301-286-1684                 (1st choice,  -1682 2nd choice)
EMAIL:  scott at lheamail.gsfc.nasa.gov
PAGER:  3013463733 at mmode.com
WEB:    http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn


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Address: vsnet-grb at kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp   
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Sources & Notice Types/Subtypes:
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    HETE_S/C_ALERT:           Enabled
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    HETE_GND_ANA:             Enabled
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    Test_type2_notices:       Disabled
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    SWIFT_SC_2SLEW:           enabled
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    SWIFT_XRT_SPECTRUM:       enabled
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    SWIFT_FULL_DATA_INIT:     enabled
    SWIFT_FULL_DATA_UPDATE:   enabled
    SWIFT_POINTDIR:           enabled
    SWIFT_BAT_TRANS:          Disabled


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