From: medin@cincsac.arc.nasa.gov (Milo S. Medin)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.cell-relay
Subject: DOE and NASA select Sprint for nationwide cell-relay service
Date: 17 Aug 92 21:31:37 GMT
Organization: NASA Science Internet Project Office

SMDS interoperability is included in this BTW...

Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 14:47:00 GMT
To: paoloop.nasamail@nasamail.nasa.gov,
    /C=USA/ADMD=TELEMAIL/PRMD=GSFC/O=GSFCMAIL/DD.UN=PUBINFO/@nasamail.nasa.gov,
    /S=<PAOLOOPATJPLPOST%JPLPIO@gemini.arc.nasa.gov>/O=CCMGW/DD.SITE=JPL/,
    <PAOLOOP@JPLPOST.JPL.NASA.GOV>, p@nasamail.nasa.gov,
    /C=USA/ADMD=TELEMAIL/PRMD=GSFC/O=GSFCMAIL/DD.UN=PUBINFO/@nasamail.nasa.gov
 
From: <hqnewsroom@nasamail.nasa.gov>
Subject: HQ92-132/NASA/DOE &SPRINT
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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.  
-more-
 
  
-2-
 
   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.
 
                                                                      - end -