V-One responds to agencies' concerns that pager communications aren'tsecure enough
At the request of agencies that use pagers for sensitive information, V-One Corp., a virtual private networking company in Germantown, Md., has introduced a wireless client for its flagship SmartGate VPN server. The SmartPage client secures traffic to, from and between alphanumeric pagers. "The level of interest shown by government organizations following several high-profile stories of compromised pager communications confirmed the need to extend our VPN security to wireless environments," said company president and chief operating officer
Convergence of voice and data as IP services signals end of separate nets
Separate networks for voice and data will become extinct as voice traffic moves onto IP networks, telephone industry executives told a gathering of federal officials last week. "Voice is an application on the data network," said John T. Curran, chief technical officer for GTE Corp.'s Internetworking Division. But that does not mean it will be free, as voice-over-IP developers have claimed, he said.
Users say shift to FTS 2001 won't be a walk in the park
FTS' Sandra Bates is optimistic about the transition from FTS 2000 to FTS 2001, which, she says, might start in March. The good news about the FTS 2001 long-distance telecommunications buy is that it is still set for an October award, the Federal Technology Service's Sandra N. Bates said this month.
FAA ascends to new IP levels
The Federal Aviation Administration's information technology office is turning to an IP load balancer to relieve strain on a Web server that gets nearly 2 million hits each week. "We have nine servers in the FAA that do Web service," said Gus Cornell, senior adviser for Web services. "Right now, one machine is shouldering most of the load, and it's nearing the limit of its capacity." The machine hosts the home page at http://www.faa.gov, through which
Gigabit Ethernet vs. ATM: Which one will survive?
BOSTON—Ethernet's inventor does not believe in peaceful coexistence, at least not among networking superpowers. "I think asynchronous transfer mode and Gigabit Ethernet are going to fight it out," Robert M. Metcalfe said this month at the Gignet conference. Metcalfe said he's putting his money on Gigabit Ethernet. He declared the ATM to the desktop campaign dead, adding that ATM is nearly dead on the LAN backbone and under attack on the WAN.
The sound of your voice can be the key that unlocks new IVR systems
Periphonics Corp. of Bohemia, N.Y., which supplied the IRS' TeleFile interactive voice response technology, is turning to voice verification on its IVR systems. Periphonics has incorporated voice verification products from Veritel Corp. of Chicago and T-Netix Inc. of Englewood, Colo., into its Open Signal Computing and Analysis Resource, or OSCAR, speech-processing algorithms. A caller's voice can determine system access rights similar to the way a fingerprint does.
Go that extra mile on your IP network bandwidth with new voice-over products
Several new voice-over-IP products promise not only to reduce long-distance telephone costs but also to squeeze more duty out of existing IP network bandwidth. E-Net Inc. of Germantown, Md., has announced a new version of its Telecom 2000 Digital Trunk Interface Gateway to connect private branch exchange trunk lines across a WAN. E-Net also released an audio card that lets a telephone plug directly into a PC for Internet calls.
Defense and Treasury run e-check pilot
The Treasury and Defense departments have launched a one-year, $1 million-a-day pilot to test a new medium of financial exchange: the electronic check. On June 30, Treasury's Financial Management Service cut its first electronic check, for $32,153, to GTE Internetworking of Cambridge, Mass. The check was electronically delivered, endorsed and deposited within minutes in the company's BankBoston and NationsBank accounts.
Potential WITS bidders get extra comment time
The General Services Administration has extended the comment period on the draft request for proposals for the Washington Interagency Telecommunications Systems 2001 contract. GSA officials said they plan to issue the final RFP late this month. Wayne Brady, planning director for GSA's National Capital Region, said the agency still plans to award the contract in December. The current WITS contract, awarded in 1989 to C&P Telephone Co., now Bell Atlantic Corp., expires in January.
New chief NSF engineer says key to job is consensus
The National Science Foundation has named Eugene Wong its new assistant director for engineering. Wong replaces Joseph Bordogna, now acting deputy director of NSF. Wong was one of the designers of Ingres, an early relational database management system now sold by Computer Associates International Inc. He comes to NSF from a position as chief scientist at Vision Software Tools Inc. of Oakland, Calif.
Axent packages its firewalls with Compaq servers for cheap turnkey network security
Axent Technologies Inc. of Rockville, Md., is throwing a fire sale on firewalls. Its Raptor 5.0 package for Microsoft Windows NT now comes bundled with Compaq Computer Corp. servers at a deep discount. The Axent Secure Packs, which provide turnkey network security for large or small enterprises, arrive preconfigured and ready to plug into a network.
Who needs an auditorium
The Defense Department streamed video broadcasts to Pentagon and DOD PCs around the world this month for the third annual Acquisition Reform Week. Top officials held interactive conferences—viewable through Web browsers over the Internet or on a Pentagon intranet—using software from Starlight Networks Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. The audience was able to take part in the webcast discussions or play back the videos on demand.
DLA shares its online catalog
The Defense Logistics Agency has posted an electronic commercial catalog called E-Cat for online comparison shopping. "Our main thrust is the military, but we intend to serve the entire government," said Roger McMillan, E-Cat program manager at DLA's Defense Logistics Information Service in Battle Creek, Mich. The E-Cat pilot began in April 1997. When it went live on the Web in December, E-Cat had seven vendors and handful of military customers. E-Cat is now accessible
FTS' claim may not ring true
The FTS 2000 contracts supposedly drove down the cost of agencies' long-haul telecommunications by about 85 percent. So, just how much of a bargain is a long-distance call? The rock-bottom price quoted by former Federal Technology Service commissioner Robert J. Woods was 2 cents per minute. That figure was quoted again in March by present commissioner Dennis J. Fischer at the FTS users' forum in Atlanta, for calls from one government user to another on
FTS data transfer is growing
FTS 2000 networks, which started a decade ago supplying mainly long-distance voice service, are expanding to handle booming data transmission demands. "Data traffic [growth] is going to continue to be exponential," said Dennis J. Fischer, commissioner of the Federal Technology Service, at the FTS 2000 Users Forum in Atlanta last month.
NASA meets via switched nets
The public switched telephone network has had a good 100-year run, but circuit switching "is obsolete. Its time is passed," said Tom Evslin, chairman of ITXC Corp. Evslin, who heads the Internet telephony company in North Brunswick, N.J., spoke at the recent Computer Telephony Expo in Los Angeles. But agencies aren't ordering flowers for the funeral yet. NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, for example, looks to the public switched network for dataconferencing instead of
USPS techs go back to school
The Postal Service late last month began using a new multipoint videoconferencing system from C-Phone Corp. to train technicians at 24 remote centers around the country. The system from the Wilmington, N.C., company is an inexpensive, off-the-shelf alternative to face-to-face classes, said Don Clemenceaux, maintenance field support specialist at the Maintenance Technical Support Center in Norman, Okla.
'98 shapes up to be doozy for telecom, feds predict
With billions of dollars' worth of federal telecommunications contracts up for grabs, this year will be a big, if stressful, one for networking and telecommunications negotiations, top government telecom executives predicted recently. The government will be ruthless in leveraging its buying power, said Dennis J. Fischer, commissioner of the General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service, last month at the 11th annual Federal Telecommunications Conference in McLean, Va.
DOE gives systems makeover
The Energy Department is giving a major face-lift to information systems for its Chicago Operations Office, upgrading servers, workstations and PCs, and constructing an intranet that will tie all the pieces together. "We're hoping to have the intranet up and running this spring," said Ronald Kuziel, systems design and analysis manager for SVRS of Argonne, Ill., DOE's contractor.
Call center delivers messages
The Postal Service delivers millions of messages each day, not all of them letters. There's a lot of other traffic between post offices, distribution centers and the USPS's new call center. "We have 40,000 post offices out there," said Bob Winkleman, call center program manager. "We have an online system, but we don't have online service available everywhere immediately."
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