Approved-By:  "EDTECH Moderator" <21765EDT@MSU.BITNET>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.edtech
Date:         Wed, 19 Aug 1992 01:39:32 EDT
From:         Gleason Sackman <sackman@plains.nodak.edu>
Subject:      ATM for DOE/NASA nets (press release) (fwd)

---------- Text of forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 17:55:12 MST
From: the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow <geoff@fernwood.mpk.ca.us>
Subject: ATM for DOE/NASA nets (press release)


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 -

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