The existing Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) hardware has been operational for nearly 5 years. As operational data volumes have increased, performance problems and throughput ceilings have been identified as important limiting factors. To address these problems, the National Weather Service (NWS) is investigating the use of the open source Linux technology and high performance Personal Computer (PC) hardware. The port of the AWIPS Communications Processor (CP) software to the Linux platform is intended to help solve the performance problems by replacing the existing satellite broadcast network CP with a new versions having an order of magnitude more processing power, speed, and a data storage capacity.

During the summer and fall of 2001, a prototype CP was implemented in an NWS test system and then to the 15 Linux workstation test sites. As part of the evaluation of the new CP, the Product Monitoring and Availability System (PAMS) was applied to assess the reliability of the throughput of the products. The PAMS will be used to evaluate the test sites and five additional sites without the Linux upgrades prior to installation of the new Linux CP to form a baseline analysis of the communications. Once the Linux CP is installed into the test sites, PAMS will analyze the data flow through the new CP and continue to use the five additional sites without the Linux upgrades as a baseline comparison.

This paper will summarize the techniques used by PAMS to analyze the data flow through the Linux CP and compare it to the existing CPs. It will also summarize the evaluation methods used to ensure the new CP works properly in the field sites.