From: Andy.Linton@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Andy Linton)
Subject: comp.dcom.cell-relay #351 - DOE and NASA select Sprint for nationwide cell-relay service  - aus.aarnet #1816
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.
X-Mailer: mail-news 4.0
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 05:44:00 GMT


In article <1992Aug17.213137.21490@news.arc.nasa.gov>,
           medin@cincsac.arc.nasa.gov (Milo S. Medin) writes:

SMDS interoperability is included in this BTW...

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.