The idea behind this is to distribute the noaaport data over the internet. Those that cannot install a dish can instead run an instance of nbsp configured as a "slave" and receive the data from a "master". Such slaves can in turn act as masters of second level slaves, and so on down a chain, to form a tree whose roots are the masters that are directly connected to a dish. In our case, this allows other campus dependencies, nearby universities or other universities and schools in our region to receive the data this way if they cannot install a dish.
It has been tested internally and we believe it is ready for wider testing. Of course the whole thing depends on the connectivity among the various sites, and it is one the things that we are trying to gauge at this stage.
Configuring nbsp as slave of one of the root masters is easy following these simple instructions.
Anyone with a dish can configure a root master.