WeatherNet
Weather-on-Demand

Download weather on demand over your wireless or satellite connection reliably, fast, and inexpensively. There are over 20,000 weather products from which to select, including weather maps, ocean charts, text forecasts, satellite imagery, GRIB data, Nexrad radar, buoy information, and more.

The package offer below includes the $99 registration and activation fee, required software, plus $67 (for a $75-data card).

WeatherNet is a system designed to optimize the download of weather and ocean data products via wireless connections. The product offers highly compressed text, images, charts, buoy data, radar, GRIB files, and many more formats. With over 20,000 continuously updated weather products, WeatherNet is the largest most comprehensive source of weather data in the world. All are available to the user on demand by the push of a button.

How it works...

Users simply drag the desired weather products into a batch folder and then pushes the button. WeatherNet immediately connects to the server via a wireless connection or via and email service and downloads the requested data. After the download, WeatherNet can be configured to automatically display the new weather data with programs such as GRIB Explorer or other viewers. WeatherNet consists of 3 components.

System overview

The WeatherNet "Robot" (at WeatherNet HQ) continually searches the internet's weather sources, updating the local content store of weather data on a Central server that is stored in a secure co-location facility with 100% network access guaranteed assuring the user the most complete and up to date repository of weather data anywhere. Note that about 1/2 the weather products are generated locally and packaged specifically for WeatherNet.

The WeatherNet Server interacts with the WeatherNet software running on the user's computer. The server accepts requests for weather data, compresses the data, packs the data into a proprietary data stream specifically designed for wireless data connections, and sends the data to the client application.

The WeatherNet software allows you to easily select weather products by adding them to batches, which can with the click of a button be enabled or disabled. By simply pushing a button the application connects to the server via the desired wireless interface (sat phone, SSB, cell phone, or Internet) and immediately downloads the requested weather.

To download weather you simply run the WeatherNet program on your Windows PC, enable or disable the preconfigured batches or create a new batch for your specific circumstance, push the download button, and then view the data. The download is completed in a few minutes, on demand, when you need the data. This product is revolutionary in that there are no firm schedules to adhere to or lengthy downloads. You get the data you need, when you need it.

Content

WeatherNet contains the most extensive collection of weather products for mariners in the world.

Categories include:

Weather maps and ocean charts
Weather products cover the globe and consist of atmospheric, surface, and sub-surface forecasts including for example, Jet stream (500 mb) data, surface winds, swells, and waves, currents, precipitation, cloud cover, etc. Weather products are continually being added to our content store, guaranteeing you the most complete and up to date collection of data anywhere.

Compression
WeatherNet uses a number of compression techniques to squeeze weather data down as much as possible reducing download times and saving you considerable satellite air time. For most products the compression can be dramatic. Ocean temperature charts for example are compressed down to by a factor of 8x. Weather charts are compressed with a factor of 4x going from 32K to 8K for example. Buoy GIF data starts out at about 22K and get squeezed to 2K for an impressive compression factor of 10x.

Here are some of the ways WeatherNet reduces weather data sizes and save you money.

Proprietary transfer protocol - The WeatherNet server speaks to the client running on your PC with a wireless protocol specifically designed to optimize download transfers of data. Standard internet protocols such as FTP and HTTP are very inefficient when downloading weather over a wireless device such as a satellite phone. Our benchmarks show an increase of 3x when transferring comparable data with WeatherNet vs. FTP over a Globalstar satellite link. A factor of 7x improvement has been observed for HTTP transfers over the same medium.

Proprietary compression of weather images - WeatherNet's compression technology reduces standard weather images by 2 to 10 times their original size.

HTML stripping - All HTML weather content is converted to plain text reducing sizes by a factor of 5. A 10K offshore HTML forecast is reduced to 2K for example.

Data condensation - For certain weather products, such as Buoy data, WeatherNet extracts pertinent material removing dead wood. Buoy Text goes from 100 lines to 2 lines yielding current observation data and removing all historical readings.

Bottom line... WeatherNet's advanced compression features dramatically reduce the time required to download weather. This savings in time translates directly to savings for you. In most cases, it's less expensive to pay for WeatherNet than it is to receive the forecast for free from other sources and pay the higher airtime costs.

Wireless Interfaces
WeatherNet supports any wireless interface that supports a Windows Dial Up Interface. Supported devices are listed below. See approximate transfer rates and costs.