Within a year's time, approximately forty Lowell Digisondes will provide ionospheric characteristics in real time. Since the echo traces of the E, Es, Fl, and F2 layers are automatically identified and scaled, all standard characteristics (critical frequencies, minimum heights, MUFF2) are available. In addition, the Digisonde calculates the vertical electron density profiles, providing for the first time an extensive data set of bottomside profiles that can be used for the IRI modeling. Efforts to express the Digisonde profile in terms of LAY functions are underway.