NASA uncovers sites unseen
The Mars Pathfinder mission generated some of the heaviest Web traffic ever seen, but officials checking specialized NASA sites have discovered it takes more than a Web server and a uniform resource locator to get information out to the intended audience. "I'm learning a tremendous amount," said Linda Porter, site curator for the Space Sciences Laboratory at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "It's an extremely complicated problem that we're trying to work through."
Reservists lead ATM charge
"We are in the process of switching over from [the Reserve Component Automation System] and moving everything to the ATM backbone," said Lt. Col. Philip E. Vermeer, the Guard's Technical Division chief. Plans call for wiring 112 classrooms by March and 600 more by 2000, putting all reservists within a 60-minute drive of an interactive distance-learning center.
GSA: Buying woes will not delay FTS 2001
An Oct. 31 amendment to the FTS 2001 request for proposals for long-distance services drew more than 400 clarification requests. The service drafted another amendment for release this month, incorporating minor changes. "We don't anticipate any major revisions," FTS deputy commissioner Sandra Bates said. "We need to get on with it. The industry has their top teams working on responses."
Federal group asks industry for help on EC
CommerceNet, a consortium of systems companies and Internet service providers, got the go-ahead from the Federal Electronic Commerce Program to study making online catalogs interoperable. If the results are promising, a four-month test by vendors and federal agencies will follow. The group will explore the use of registries and examine metadata tagging as a way to make catalogs accessible across platforms.
Energy aims sights on ATM
The Multipoint, Gateway and Control-100 unit from Accord Video Telecommunications Inc. of Atlanta does proprietary transcoding that lets sites with different equipment and algorithms connect at their optimal speeds rather than at the rate of the lowest common denominator. The MGC-100 supports international H.320 video telephony standards and eventually will support the H.310 standard for ATM videoconferencing.
NIH gives long-distance care
That's the task of a telemedicine project in the Information Systems Department at NIH's Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center. NIH set up the center in 1948 to bring patient care closer to its research facilities. Now videoconferencing has put the clinic in touch with other research centers, and remote doctors and their patients in touch with NIH experts.
PTO net suffers growing pains
If completed as planned in November, the PTO Integrated Network will have more than 20 ASX 1000 10-gigabit/sec backbone switches from the Pittsburgh company, plus 150 PowerHub 7000 closet switches. "This will be one of the biggest PowerHub installations in the country," said PTO computer engineer Wes Clark, who oversees the network.
DMS gets mail guard, firewall
The initial release of Gauntlet Firewall for DMS, funded by the National Security Agency under a contract awarded last spring, is a Fortezza-enabled X.400 mail guard and firewall. Trusted Information Systems of Glenwood, Md., will augment it with software upgrades for X.500 directory services next year. A Defense Information Systems Agency official said X.500 support is a requirement for DMS firewalls.
GSA rolls out requirements for Seat Management buy
The General Services Administration has released the first of two requests for proposals for the multibillion-dollar Seat Management Services contract. GSA will use the first phase of the buy to validate bidders. The agency plans to release the second RFP by mid-November. Under what program manager Wanda Smith called a very ambitious schedule, GSA hopes to award contracts March 2 that would let federal agencies outsource their desktop computing needs.
TriniCom has its day in court
Today the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida conducted its first video hearing. Lawyers in a Fort Myers courtroom pleaded their cases before Chief Judge Alexander L. Paskay in Tampa. The Sony TriniCom 5100 videoconferencing system installed in each of the courthouses synchronizes audio with full-motion video and provides document imaging. Florida court officials hope the system and its Integrated Services Digital Network connection will eliminate 125-mile trips between the two cities.
DISA will design DISN with ATM model suite
The Defense Information Systems Agency will use an early version of a network modeling suite it co-funded to help design one of the world's largest asynchronous transfer mode networks. DISA partnered with Make Systems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., to ensure that NetMaker XA 3.0 had functions for building ATM infrastructure into the modernized Defense Information Systems Network. A commercial release of NetMaker XA 3.0 is set for release by the end of the year.
Agency will sell bonds online -
About 55 million people own U.S. savings bonds. Another million have Treasury Direct retail accounts for buying Treasury securities. The Bureau of the Public Debt, which finances the nation's indebtedness from an operating center in Parkersburg, W.Va., is upgrading its computer network to handle these accounts electronically. If all goes well, the bureau will begin selling savings bonds online late this year. Customers eventually will have access to their Treasury Direct accounts via the World
DOD and Lockheed are pleased with DMS test -
Defense Department and Lockheed Martin Corp. officials are guardedly optimistic about results of the Defense Message System's initial operational test and evaluation, which took place last month at nine military sites. The Defense Information Systems Agency will not make the IOT&E results public for another two weeks. DMS program manager Tom Clarke said in a statement that the preliminary results "confirm DMS Release 1.0 is a viable baseline system" that likely will evolve to full
HHS tries buying on the Web
Ecweb.net, developed by EC Web Technologies of McLean, Va., does all the electronic data interchange translation, so agencies can use their EDI infrastructures. At the other end, vendors need not invest in EDI software or work through a FACNET value-added network. "The acquisition people like it a lot better because of the wide range of vendors" they can reach, said Amen Hillow, head of HHS Information Technology Services' Systems and Network Management Group. "You don't
Packet Engines readies a Gigabit Ethernet starter
Want to be the first on your block with Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth? A kit will be on the market soon Packet Engines Inc., which released its full-duplex Gigabit Ethernet repeater in June, is looking for early federal users in power workgroups that want gigabit-to-the-desktop performance. "There are always those who buy early," said Bernard Daines, president of the Spokane, Wash., company. "The early ones who want power will pay the price to take it to
NetScout tracks speed blocks
Like many network experts, Ken Wong often hears users complain that the network is slow. "It becomes a black hole," said Wong, an electrical engineer at the National Institutes of Health. "Where is the network slow?" NIH runs a WAN backbone of four Fiber Distributed Data Interface rings with about 100 routers from Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif.
DISA changes to CIP routers
The Defense Information Systems Agency is midway through changing its megacenters to a routed environment. DISA expects to save on hardware and software maintenance as well as line charges by replacing mainframe front-end processors with routers equipped with Channel Interface Processors (CIPs) from Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif.
Revisions again delay FTS 2001 bid deadline
The moving target that has become the bid deadline for FTS 2001 proposals just jumped again by 30 days. General Services Administration officials said they will make a major revision this fall to the request for proposals for the long-haul telecommunications contracts. The already delayed bid deadline will move to Oct. 29, officials in GSA's Federal Telecommunications Service said.
Customer survey uncovers identity crisis
Although the Federal Telecommunications Service is serving up more than long-haul communications these days, it seems few federal users know the extent of FTS' services beyond networking. "FTS, to a lot of people, tends to focus on long-distance telephone service," FTS commissioner Robert J. Woods said. "We're looking at whether we need to change the name of the larger service."
Library digitizes theater pics
The Library of Congress recently finished digitizing 2,000 images from its Federal Theatre Project collection, using IBM Corp.'s Digital Library software suite and a special scanning network. Visitors to the World Wide Web site at http://www.loc.gov can view scripts, set designs and posters from federally sponsored Depression-era theater productions of Macbeth, Dr. Faustus and Power.
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