From: ari@viipuri.nersc.gov (Ari Ollikainen)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.cell-relay
Subject: Re: DOE and NASA select Sprint for nationwide cell-relay service
Date: 17 Aug 92 23:20:07 GMT
Organization: National Energy Research Supercomputer Center, Livermore CA


 
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.
 
                                                                      - end -
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.cell-relay