If it's good enough for the U.S. Navy, and it's good enough for GTE it's good enough for STREETWISE....
It looks to me like FNTN is making an INDISPENSIBLE (per NAVY
article) and HIGH QUALITY (per GTE article) COMMUNICATION
NETWORK...
Read on...
GOVERNMENT NEWS
GCN July 20, 1998
OCEANS APART, NAVY SAILORS SEE EYE-TO-EYE VIA
VIDEOCONFERENCING
By Gregory Slabodkin
GCN Staff
Videoconferences let commanders carry out routine meetings.
By equipping its ships with videoconferencing systems, the Navy is making it possible for commanders thousands of miles apart to talk face-to-face.
The service wants all its ships and submarines to have videoconferencing systems by 2003. The Video Teleconferencing (VTC) Project is part of the service's Information Technology for the 21st Century initiative, said Adm. Archie Clemins, commander of the Navy's Pacific Fleet, at last month's Naval League Convention in Seattle.
"We will expand our connectivity to the world from a select number of room, cart and standalone desktop units here at fleet down to select staff LAN machines that we identify as needing a rapid face-to-face communications tool," he said.
The Navy's videoconferencing systems range from room-sized to portable cart and desktop systems for forces both ashore and afloat. But the technology for the most part is migrating toward asynchronous transfer mode systems that run on desktop PCs, Clemins said.
"Our vision is to deliver reliable VTC technology down to the desktop, using commercial products that run on IT-21 workstations," Clemins said. "These units, installed on select PCs, will leverage our ATM LAN and metropolitan area network architecture and deliver new full-motion, full-duplex audio, video- and dataconferencing in point-to-point and multipoint fashions."
To enable the IT-21 PCs, which run Microsoft Windows NT, to handle videoconferencing, the Navy uses the International Telecommunications Union's H.323 standard for the exchange of real-time voice and video over networks and an H.320 standard gateway that supports dial-up connections for classified and unclassified conferences.
Pacific Fleet has 4500 Series videoconferencing systems from PictureTel Corp. of Andover, Mass., installed aboard its flagships, carriers and amphibious vessels. The systems communicate via the Navy's Video Information Exchange System (VIXS).
VIXS consists of shipboard H.320-compatible carts that are connected to the Defense Satellite Communications System or commercial Challenge Athena C Band Super-High Frequency terminals and to H.323-compatible multipoint control units ashore.
Worldwide hubs
The VIXS hubs in Hampton Roads, Va.; Oahu, Hawaii; Bahrain, Iran; and Naples, Italy; have Integrated Services Digital Network dial-up access ports and provide support for the proprietary PictureTel SG-3 algorithm at speeds of 112 Kbps to 384 Kbps.
As part of the VIXS architecture, all of Pacific Fleet's ships with videoconferencing systems use PictureTel 4500 or similar cart systems. Some Navy and Marine Corps shore facilities use Rembrandt VTC systems from Compression Labs Inc. of San Jose, Calif.
"Various other vendors are capable of the H.320 standard, however, proprietary algorithms are preferred when like terminals are connected," according to the service's Information Technology Standards Guidance. The Navy chief information officer's Board of Representatives in May laid out the videoconferencing standards in the ITSG.
Clemins' staff helped draft the ITSG, which recommends a number of videoconferencing standards, including H.320, H.321, H.323, H.324 and T.120. They comprise the core technologies for current and emerging Navy and Marine Corps videoconferencing applications.
The T.120 standard covers real-time dataconferencing.
The H.320 standard details narrow-band telephony and terminal equipment over dedicated and switched services, such as ISDN. The H.321 and H.323 standards include video communications for LANs, and the H.324 standard covers high-quality video and audio compression over modem connections.
Pushing industry
"The basic philosophy here is to ride industry and push them along to achieve the best commercial VTC products available on the market," Clemins said. "We're doing that now and look forward to first quarter 1999 delivery of high quality NT VTC products that will run over native ATM at 30 frames per second."
The Navy saw the first tangible benefits of videoconferencing during the Taiwan Straits crisis in early 1996, when Clemins was commander of the 7th Fleet. He and his staff used the technology to reduce planning time from days to hours.
Videoconferences let the U.S. commander-in-chief Pacific, the Pacific Fleet commander and the 7th Fleet commander carry out routine meetings as they are needed.
"Since 75 percent of all human communication is nonverbal, videoconferencing enabled the full range of communications through facial expression, tone of voice and body language," Clemins said. "VTCs allowed my staff to fully understand the intentions and know what information to pull."
Under the Defense Video Service-Global contract awarded to AT&T Corp., the Navy last month began migrating dedicated videoconferencing rooms to hubs in Atlanta, Oahu, San Diego and Washington.ÿ
GOVERNMENT COMPUTER NEWS
Copyright c 1998 by Post-Newsweek Business Information, Inc. ,
and....
NEWBRIDGE NETWORKS AND GTE TO ACCELERATE
ROLL-OUT OF VIDEOCONFERENCING IN THE HACIENDA
LA PUENTE SCHOOL DISTRICT'S NETWORK
Newbridge Solution Offers Superior Quality Videoconferencing, Enabling More Students to Participate in Shared Projects, Regardless of Their Location
KANATA, Ontario, July 8, 1998 -- Newbridge Networks today announced that GTE has selected the Siemens / Newbridge MainStreetXpressT 36170 Multiservices Switching platform for deployment in support of the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District's network, which enables interactive distance learning in California. The Newbridger solution enables Hacienda students to benefit from fully-integrated, superior-quality videoconferencing at a growing number of sites simultaneously over a single network.
The Hacienda school district, located southeast of Los Angeles and comprised of 44 schools, serves a mixed socio-economic array of thousands of students -- from young children to mature adults. The area's first interactive "classroom without walls", created in 1996, was made possible by GTE and the Newbridger VIVIDT switched routing solution. The VIVID solution, which provides Layer 3 switching with unmatchable scalability and centralized management capabilities, is fast, powerful, reliable and flexible -- essential qualities for delay-sensitive applications such as video-based education. With the VIVID solution already deployed at numerous sites throughout the Hacienda school district, including its administrative and community locations, the need to integrate these locations into a flexible and robust distance learning environment has been addressed by GTE with the MainStreetXpress 36170 Multiservices Switching platform.
"Newbridge and GTE have a good understanding of our requirements," said Michael Droe, Director of Network and Computer Services for the Hacienda La Puente School District. "For example, the Newbridge solution enables us to deliver superior-quality video to multiple sites simultaneously. Children today have grown up with Nintendo and television, and anything less than broadcast quality would be something they wouldn't want to look at."
Newbridge was selected to provide the switching platform for Hacienda's videoconferencing needs because of its capability to offer a high-speed, scalable asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) solution that can simultaneously transmit superior-quality video, voice and data. In addition, the Newbridge VIVID switched routing solution works as a multi-service router connecting 44 sites and delivering over 6000 Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and ATM ports across the entire school district.
As Hacienda's network has grown, so has the demand for even higher-bandwidth applications. Hacienda's desire to become a full-fledged educational service provider made it necessary to obtain greater flexibility for communicating among multiple sites. GTE and the Newbridge solution have enabled students in different grades at a variety of schools to work on shared projects. By using video to connect the schools into a virtual family, the expense of busing students to one location can be avoided and resources can be shared by all students, regardless of their location.
"The Newbridge product is a key element of the overall service solution that we are delivering to the Hacienda La Puente School District," said Joe Lardieri, ATM product manager, GTE. "Together, we are helping to bring information that is often difficult to obtain closer to the fingertips of students in the school district."
"Hacienda is building a visionary learning environment," said Stu Aaron, Assistant Vice President, Enterprise Marketing, Newbridge Networks. "Newbridge is delighted to be part of what will clearly become the pre-eminent model for education today, and well into the next millenium."
Hacienda's future plans include expanding their "virtual" classrooms into 39 schools located in the Los Angeles area, as well as connecting two public libraries and seven additional sites to its network for correctional education.
With 1997 revenues of more than US$23 billion, GTE is one of the world's largest telecommunications companies and a leading provider of integrated telecommunications services. In the United States, GTE provides local service in 28 states and wireless service in 17 states; nationwide long-distance and internetworking services, ranging from dial-up Internet access for residential and small business consumers, to Web-based applications for Fortune 500 companies; and video service in selected markets. Additional information about GTE can be found on the Internet at gte.com.
Newbridge Networks (NYSE: NN; TSE: NNC) designs, manufactures, markets and services networking solutions to organizations in more than 100 countries. Newbridge leverages its relationship with 16 Affiliate companies and strategic alliances with Siemens and 3Com Corporation to deliver seamless, end-to-end solutions. Newbridge customers include the world's 250 largest telecommunications service providers and more than 10,000 corporations, government organizations and other institutions. Founded in 1986, the Company employs more than 6,000 people on five continents. News and information are available at www.newbridge.com.
Newbridge, logo are registered trademarks of Newbridge Networks Corporation.
MainStreetXpress is a trademark used exclusively by Siemens AG and Newbridge Networks Corporation under license for their comprehensive solutions in broadband communications. No agency relationship, partnership, or joint ownership of a legal entity is to be inferred or implied by the use of the term "Alliance".
c 1998 Newbridge Networks Corporation.
Focused on the VAST potential of the company, not the short-term
price fluctuations.
Regards,
STREETWISE |
