From: yee@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Peter E. Yee)
Newsgroups: sci.space.news
Subject: NASA/DOE select SPRINT for communications services [Release 92-132] (Forwarded)
Date: 17 Aug 92 19:31:08 GMT
Followup-To: sci.space
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Apparently-To: sci-space-news@ames.arc.nasa.gov

Drucella Andersen                                                             
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                                                      August 17, 1992
(Phone:  202/453-8613)

Jeff Sherwood
Department of Energy, Washington, D.C.
(Phone:  202/586-5806)

RELEASE:  92- 132

NASA/DOE SELECT SPRINT FOR COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES

     The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and
the Department of Energy(DOE) today announced that they have selected
Sprint to provide broadband communications services that will upgrade
the technology of three of their national research data networks.

     The contract has an estimated value of more than $50 million over
the next 5 years.  Sprint will use a new technology based on high speed
transmission of fixed length cells of data to enable the communications
networks to increase speed tremendously, from 1.5 million to 622
million bits per second.  This contract is expected to accelerate
Sprint's schedule in making the new technology available on a
nation-wide commercial basis, originally not expected before 1994.

     Four companies will work together on this state-of-the-art
technology.  Sprint, Kansas City, Mo., will provide fiber-optic
communications facilities.  TRW, Redondo Beach, Calif., will provide
new broadband access switches developed by their Space Communications
Division.  Cisco, Menlo Park, Calif., will supply network routers and
Digital Equipment Corp., Maynard, Mass., will be responsible for the
network management software.

     DOE's Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and NASA's AEROnet and
Science Internet (NSI) provide high-speed, nation wide and
international data communications to support a variety of open research
and educational programs in energy, aeronautics, space and Earth
sciences.  Universities, laboratories and research centers use the
networks.  The NSI project offices are located at NASA's Ames Research
Center, Palo Alto, Calif.  The National Energy Research Supercomputer
Center at DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore,
Calif., manages ESnet.

   This activity is funded under the Federal High Performance Computing
and Communications program.  The program was a 1992 Presidential
initiative and was authorized in  the High Performance Computing Act of
1991.  A fundamental objective of the initiative is to promote U.S.
competitiveness in the fields of scientific computing and
communications.

     The program is a nine-agency effort with four major components,
including High Performance Computing Systems, Advance Software
Technology and Algorithms, National Research and Education Network
(NREN) and Basic Research and Human Resources.  The selection of Sprint
represents one of the first major contracts to be established under the
network component of the program.

     This contract makes Sprint the first carrier to provide wide-area
ATM service.  ATM stands for Asynchronous Transfer Mode, an emerging
technology, and will enable networks to evolve from the current
T1-based bandwidth of 1.5 million bits per second capacity to
substantially faster speeds, with steps to 45, 155 and 622 million bits
per second in the next few years, for a total increase in speed of 400
times.  By comparison, approximately 20 pages of a standard-sized
dictionary can be transmitted in one second at T1 rates.  At the
highest rate planned, about 8,000 pages of information will be
transmitted per second.

     The ATM technology is considered the precursor to a broadband
technology, called B-ISDN, that will support future multi-media
universal transmission.  This technology will be capable of
simultaneously carrying voice, data and video communications traffic as
well as bandwidth-intensive applications, for example, the transfer of
high definition television images and links for networks with high
capacity Local Area Networks.
Newsgroups: sci.space.news