Sonet links VA medical centers
Veterans Affairs Department hospitals and clinics in the Chicago area have brought up the department's first regional Synchronous Optical Network ring and a hybrid copper-fiber WAN. It links eight medical centers and 28 outpatient clinics in five states. The Veterans Information Systems Network (VISN) 12 began carrying data applications in August. Video, including telemedicine applications, will be added later this year.
Service personnel join forces overseas for smart card field test
The Defense Department sent smart cards into the field for the first time this spring during joint exercises in Thailand. About 8,000 Army, Navy and Air Force personnel and Thai military personnel used the cards to automate transportation manifests during the Cobra Gold '98 exercise. It was the first large-scale military operational test of the programmable cards, and Lt. Col. Steve Cameron, the Marine Corps provost marshal, called it an absolute success.
Corps works to ensure a Net-friendly environment
Sites with hacking information, explicit sex and bomb-making recipes are off-limits at all times. The Army Corps of Engineers' district office in Huntington, W.Va., wanted a handle on its Internet use. "We were having some slowdown in traffic going outside the district office," said Ken Shaffer, the district's information management project manager.
Kinks in satellite communications service delay rollout to Defense
Eleven of the 12 gateways for satellite-to-network call switching are operational. Iridium LLC is delaying its new global satellite communications service by a month while it works out bugs in the wireless network that eventually will serve 120,000 Defense Department users. Iridium had planned to begin the network service early next month, but Edward F. Staiano, the Washington consortium's chief executive officer, said the new startup date will be Nov. 1.
Marines march in via phone
When the Marines stormed ashore in Newfoundland this summer, they carried cellular telephones for secure communications and global links over a tactical cellular network. NATO's Maritime Combined Operational Training (MARCOT) exercises, hosted by Canada in June, marked the first deployment of tactical encrypted cellular communications by U.S. forces. The 2nd Marine Division used the TacCell system from Wheat International Communications Corp. of Reston, Va.
DOD auditor says feds must focus on both network security and year 2000 problem
Lame federal network security is unlikely to improve until the year 2000 crisis has passed, a Defense Department auditor has predicted. "There is no doubt they are competing head to head for money and resources," said Robert Lieberman, DOD assistant inspector general for auditing. The department's priorities became clear in a memorandum last month from Defense Secretary William Cohen. He threatened to suspend other information technology initiatives if the services do not repair date code quickly enough
Survey: Virus siege increases on feds' servers, PCs
Computer viruses are spreading despite the presence of prophylactic programs, according to a study by the International Computer Security Association. The incidents reported for January and February this year jumped 48 percent from the same period last year, even though 91 percent of respondents' servers and 98 percent of their PCs reportedly had antivirus software.
Company revamps wireless LAN line for notebook users
Expecting more demand for wireless computing, Bay Networks Inc. has rebranded the AirSurfer wireless LAN products it acquired in a $10 million purchase of NetWave Technologies Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif., earlier this year as the BayStack 600 series. The deal gave the Santa Clara, Calif., company a line of standards-based wireless LAN products that connect notebook users at up to 2-Mbps throughout an office or campus, said Doug Makishima, Bay Networks' product line manager for wireless
Energy will boost supercomputer speed using latest version of HPPI switches
The Energy Department's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative will turn to HPPI switches with an aggregate switching capacity of 512 Gbps to crank up a supercomputer to 3 trillion floating-point operations per second. Silicon Graphics Inc. is constructing the 3-teraFLOPS machine for Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The switches, from ODS Networks Inc. of Richardson, Texas, are based on the American National Standards Institute's High Performance Parallel Interface 6400 standard.
Technology in 1860 meant wires in trees
One hundred and thirty-five years ago, when the Defense Department was the War Department, the telegraph was the cutting edge of military networking, delivering timely information to soldiers. As a Civil War re-enactor, I took part in a recreation of an 1860s-era military telegraph system in operation in July at the 135th anniversary re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. Two-and-a-half miles of wire were strung over the hills south of Gettysburg, linking eight operator's stations to
DOD bites back at hackers preying on its Web servers
The Pentagon launched an attack applet of its own this month to thwart a denial-of-service attack against its DefenseLink Web site at http://www.defenselink.mil. DefenseLink was one of three sites targeted on Sept. 7 by a group that calls itself the Electronic Disturbance Theater. The group claimed to be acting in solidarity with Zapatista rebels in the Mexican state of Chiapas to protest Defense Department funding of the School of the Americas.
Coast Guard adds Fast Ethernet connections to ship, shore LANs
The Coast Guard has launched a $52 million project to upgrade LAN infrastructures aboard more than 300 ships and at more than 400 shore sites over the next year. The Workstation 3 LAN Cabling Project will bring switched Ethernet to the desktops of Coast Guard users via a Fast Ethernet fiber backbone.
Army base eases network jam
We're trying to get people to stop using e-mail as a way of passing PowerPoint files Information technology plumbers at Fort Monroe, Va., are trying several methods to unclog a local network. In a move from shared 10-Mbps LAN segments to a 100-Mbps switched environment, technicians at the Army base are replacing three routers from Bay Networks Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., which cost $15,000 a year each to maintain, with year 2000-ready Cisco
Voice over IP services come calling on networks
Cisco Systems Inc. began integrating IBM Systems Network Architecture networks with IP networks eight years ago. Its InterWorks Business Unit now controls nearly 80 percent of the SNA router market. "We're going to be repeating that process" in bringing voice services onto IP networks, said Paul Sikorski, InterWorks product line manager for the San Jose, Calif., company.
Big storm forces FEMA to beef up Web service
The Federal Emergency Management Agency got some emergency assistance of its own last month when Hurricane Bonnie threatened to swamp the agency's Internet connection. Our Web site was under siege," content manager Marc Wolfson said. As the storm moved up the North Carolina Coast, traffic at http://www.fema.gov grew to 2 million hits on Aug. 26—10 times the daily average and more than the T1 connection could handle.
Managers' choice: bandwidth now, management later
Network managers who are torn between buying more bandwidth and getting network management tools usually decide in favor of bandwidth, said speakers on a panel at the recent Gignet Conference in Boston. "Bandwidth is cheap and getting cheaper," said David Dimond of First Consulting Group of Long Beach, Calif. Throwing bandwidth at the WAN is expensive, however, and new telephony applications such as voice-over IP make it hard to keep up with the demand, he said.
Millions hit, millions miss Starr report on Web
President Clinton wasn't the only one under pressure the last week or so. Government servers were overwhelmed by the public demand for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's report on his investigation of President Clinton. Even so, millions of people still managed to get onto government Web sites to read the report during the weekend after its release Sept. 11.
Marines put big plans online
Maj. Mark Cantrell of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command says intranet documents can replace the 8-foot charts that are cumbersome in the field. The Marine Corps' Architecture Branch, charged with fitting together all the Corps' command, control, communications, computer and intelligence structures, had to find a way to keep reams of documentation from becoming shelfware.
Ethernet switch and router competition intensifies
Hewlett-Packard Co. and Bay Networks Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., have introduced dueling Ethernet desktop switches that will compete on a dollar basis. And for the backbone, Cabletron Systems Inc. of Rochester, N.H., has begun an aggressive promotion for its SmartSwitch Router. Hardware, software and power supply all sell for $12,995.
American Mobile adds security to federal satellite telephone service
American Mobile Satellite Corp. of Reston, Va., in June began selling Secure Telephone Unit III service with its satellite communications. The service can secure links over wireless and public switched telephone networks. The STU III dedicated telephone is the federal standard for secure telephone communications by military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It encrypts analog voice signals for transmission over ordinary telephone lines.
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