Yeah what does “air quality data network” even mean? Do they have dedicated circuits between all the consulates and then some pop somewhere all for air quality sensors? If so, then it deserves to be shutdown because that would be grossly over engineered for the task. Imagine, an entire dedicated network and all the gear and lease expense that comes with it to read some sensors from a rest api.
I'm sure all it is is some sensors at each embassy that sends a HTTP POST or MQTT message or whatever to some central server at the EPA to send measurements, and then the AirNow app has access to that data via some API that reads from a DB.
Air Quality network usually refers to just having at least one air quality monitoring station. There's no special network here, they usually just use 4G.
The stations themselves run between $100 to $50,000.
> Do they have dedicated circuits between all the consulates
Yes .. multiple parallel and redundant dedicated highly secure encrypted clean room communications between embassies and home with the bandwith for multiple high res video data, satellite feeds etc.
> because that would be grossly over engineered for the task.
You think US embassy networks are grossly over engineered to be resistant to Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Iranian, Isreali, spy networks?
Over engineered? .. there are museums dedicated to sneaky arse spy gear, eg:
I think a dedicated, secure blah blah network for air quality sensor data is indeed over engineered.
If it rides for free in the existing infrastructure then how can it be shutdown? Or are the being dramatic as OP said and really they just turned off the api.
I would guess (albeit a guess based on decades of real life experience across several countries) that the instruments are still on the roof (it costs money to remove them) the data and instrument routines are being kept up by a DoD adjacent SIGINT team that look after a forest of antenna, instruments, rack mount IT gear etc, and the data is still going back home to the US.
The literal at embassy upkeep costs for these atmospheric instruments is zero given it's minor work piggybacking on required existing staffed infrastucture that's not going away.
What's probably been cut is the "making it public" part that has a third party contractor take pooled embassy data and put it up on a website for all the world to see.
That needn't be expensive .. but it's been cut all the same.
Of course the US still runs embassy instruments, esp. in 'hostile' locations - seismic to detect tunneling, air quality to detect gassing, radiometric for nuclear hazards, network sanity and canary services to trip digital intrusion, etc. None of that is going away.
> I think a dedicated, secure blah blah network for air quality sensor data is indeed over engineered.
I'm sorry, are you on HN but don't actually have any IT experience?
The dedicated secure high bandwidth network is for the embassy .. a literal US outpost in a foreign potentially hostile land.
It's for secure comms, SCIF to SCIF comms, diplomatic communications, backup for military | intelligence usage.
Air quality and other met data is a trivial low bandwidth data load that could transmit in full on a shitty low baud POTS phone .. there's no issue having an embassy SIGINT officer set and forget a pipe on the existing network infrastructure, their time is paid for, the equipment is there.
