Netscape reassures DOD after takeover by AOL
Netscape Communications Corp.'s acquisition by America Online Inc. will strengthen Netscape server and application software development—a concern for the Defense Department as its largest single customer, said John Menkart, Netscape director of government sales. Netscape formerly had to divide its focus between server and application software, leading to some government worries about its ultimate direction, Menkart said. AOL of Dulles, Va., the world's largest online service provider with 14 million subscribers, will help Netscape deliver in
VA tests medical smart cards
The Veterans Affairs Department is piloting a program to put medical records on smart cards to speed care for veterans outside VA's health systems. VA's HomeCare program in Charleston, S.C., stored brief medical histories for 80 patients on smart cards with 8K of memory apiece. Card readers and software were installed at Charleston-area hospitals and clinics where patients go for after-hours or specialty treatment, and on portable computers used by
Sonic security appliances do job with little management
Sonic Systems Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., has introduced a network security appliance that extends its SonicWall products to as many as 1,000 users on enterprise networks. The SonicWall hardware security devices supply firewall services, virtual private networks, content filtering and applet blocking on small to midsize networks. The SonicWall Pro appliance will serve branch offices and larger single-site networks that cannot afford a full-time firewall manager.
Report: C4I heavy on vulnerability, thin on interoperability
The Defense Department has done too little to protect its command, control, communications, computers and intelligence infrastructure against attacks, a recent National Research Council study concluded. Nor has DOD succeeded in making C4I systems interoperable across the military services. The study, requested by Congress in the Defense Authorization Act of 1996, recommends that DOD's leaders place a higher value on defensive activities, retool their acquisition practices and set more practical standards for interoperability.
Future of DSL technologies is bright, advocates say
Digital subscriber lines are poised to take over the last mile of existing local telephone networks—at least according to DSL proponents. "There is more than light at the end of the tunnel," said John Freeman, an analyst at Current Analysis Inc. of Sterling Va. "It seems like we are emerging from the tunnel."
DOE builds firewall at lab to fend off hackers
What's in Los Alamos' firewall Los Alamos National Laboratory has hidden most of its unclassified network behind a custom-built firewall to stop hacker attacks on the Energy Department facility at Los Alamos, N.M. Public information is consolidated on about 150 Web servers outside the firewall. The rest of about 17,000 networked devices now are off-limits to the public, said Gina Fisk, a
DOD reserves gateway to Iridium's global satellite service; other agencies mayfollow
The Defense Department is the largest single customer for Iridium LLC's financially troubled global satellite communications service. DOD has reserved one of the consortium's 12 ground gateways capable of serving up to 120,000 users and 1,000 simultaneous calls. The Army, Navy and Air Force are testing ways to integrate the Iridium satellite network into their communications plans.
FTS awards first two contracts for satellite services
The General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service has awarded the first two in a series of satellite communications contracts to Hughes Global Services Inc. of El Segundo, Calif., and John Tidrow and Associates Inc. of Fayetteville, N.C. Each contract is worth up to $50 million in the first year and as much as $50 million more if GSA picks up two six-month options. Federal users can order fixed, mobile, temporary
DOD expects help as it cuts over to FTS 2001
In moving its switched voice and other nondata services to the FTS 2001 program, the Defense Department will rely heavily on MCI WorldCom Inc.'s experience in shepherding DOD network transitions over the past several years. "We negotiated with MCI WorldCom to handle the lion's share of the transition work," said John C. Johnson, DOD's FTS 2001 transition manager.
USDA plans 21 city networks
Who will share nets? The so-called Group 1 cities probably will become concentration or hub nodes on a new nationwide backbone Agriculture is planning. The idea is to consolidate traffic in cities with the highest traffic volumes and the most facilities, said Gordon Durflinger, leader of the business services team for USDA Telecom Services and Operations.
USPS starts on foundation for electronic services
The Postal Service has awarded a four-year, $22 million noncompetitive contract to Secure Computing Corp. to help develop and implement its Security Infrastructure Plan. USPS is modernizing its business practices to be Web-enabled, said John Sekevitch, vice president and general manager of professional services for the San Jose, Calif., company. "The idea is to become more competitive," he said.
Postal wants to put its stamp on .us domain
The Postal Service is eyeing the Internet's .us domain as an address space it could administer on behalf of U.S. citizens and organizations. USPS could provide universal, private and secure electronic addresses for all residents in the United States, the agency said in a written response to a Commerce Department request for comments about the .us domain. "The Postal Service could enhance electronic addresses by linking them to physical delivery
GSA dials for more dollars
The Federal Technology Service's next round of Metropolitan Area Acquisitions for local telephone service will not necessarily go to cities with large numbers of General Services Administration customers. The word came from Margaret C. Binns, an FTS assistant commissioner, speaking at last month's Federal Telecommunications Conference sponsored by Telestrategies Inc. of McLean, Va.
Circuit-switched DTM channels deliver IP services
The DynaSwitch 100A is touted as the first commercial switch based on dynamic synchronous transfer mode (DTM) technology, which can guarantee quality of service for IP traffic. DTM, developed in Sweden by the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and Ericsson Telecom AB, integrates voice, video and data and ensures availability of IP applications.
VersaPath gateway products send mainframe data over IP networks
VersaPath Web-to-host gateway products from Kasten Chase Applied Research Ltd. of Mississauga, Ontario, deliver mainframe data and applications over IP networks. VersaPath comes with desktop PC client, browser client and thin client software, as well as a developer kit for ActiveX custom applications. Kasten Chase has provided host connectivity for terminals at Agriculture Department county offices across the United States through several generations of its products. Dave Mulder, the company's director of technology, said some USDA offices
Agencies show interest in switching to Gigabit Ethernet
Several networking companies expect Gigabit Ethernet to move off the test bed and onto the backbone this year. "Growth is in the range of 70 percent to 80 percent a quarter," said James Mustarde, director of marketing communications for Allied Telesyn International Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif. "We are getting a lot of de-mand from people who want to introduce Gigabit on the backbone and in server farms."
Bell Labs' high-bandwidth wireless prototype could have military uses
Improving on government satellite communications, scientists at Lucent Technologies Inc.'s Bell Labs have pushed wireless data at 10 Gbps more than two miles through the Earth's atmosphere. Bell Labs of Murray Hill, N.J., used dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) and powerful optical amplifiers to achieve the 10-Gbps rate, outstripping current commercial wireless optical systems by an order of magnitude.
AAFES phone service contract goes to MCI WorldCom.FTS
The Army and Air Force Exchange Service has awarded a 10-year, $1.5 billion communications contract to MCI WorldCom Inc. to supply pay phones, residential and phone center service, Internet access and calling cards at Army and Air Force installations around the world. MCI WorldCom beat out incumbent AT&T Corp., Qwest Communications International Inc. of Denver and Sprint Corp. The contract award came less than a month after MCI WorldCom won a portion of the General Services
Navy lab: 'I want my HDTV'
At the recent ComNet trade show in Washington, Fore Systems Inc. of Warrendale, Pa., and the Naval Research Laboratory transmitted live, high-definition television images via asynchronous transfer mode switches. The demonstration network that carried the images between Washington and Newport News, Va., consisted of commercial products and prototype technologies developed with federal funding.
Navy tries out tactical toolkit
The Navy plans to install a prototype of its new Area Air Defense Commander module on the cruiser USS Shiloh this spring. The AADC toolkit for operational and tactical planning will go on board 12 Aegis cruisers over the next five years. The hardware and software toolkit is designed to smooth out joint operations by U.S. military branches and allied forces. It integrates real-time situational information from existing Defense Department systems with databases of geographic and
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