North American Network Operators Group
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Re: $400 million network upgrade for the Pentagon

  • From: Brad Knowles
  • Date: Tue Aug 13 17:51:09 2002 
At 6:21 PM -0500 2002/08/12, gg wrote:


 The Department of Defense does posses allot of "network disorganization"
 mostly on the NIPERNET side.

	You mean NIPRnet, right?


      Allot of the NIPERNET "unclassified" network is just plain unruly at
 it's best (I left the military in 2000, so maybe things have changed).
I was the DISA.MIL Technical POC until I left in 1995, and I am the guy who convinced the SIPRnet and NIPRnet administrators to go with DNS for doing hostname resolution (instead of HOSTS.TXT files), as well as using real IP address space issued by ARIN, instead of just randomly fabricating some network space (in the event that the networks were ever connected to the live Internet, some point in the distant future). I'm also the guy who turned back to ARIN a few Class A, B, and a number of Class C network ranges that we were no longer using.

                                                                         Any
 shop with their ADP or IT staff can practically get a server up and running,
 build intranets, databases, etc.  without practically anyone raising an
 eyebrow, this is at the command level.

	Yup.


      Allot of these systems are non-redundant, and pose single points of
 failures, etc, but again this is at the command level.
True enough. But then these aren't mission-critical systems like WWMCCS or GCCS.

      After moving along the ranks, from a lowly seaman recruit running AUI,
 cat V, and fiber cabling on an aircraft carrier, to a Third Class Petty
 Officer stationed at The Unified Atlantic Region Network Operations Center
 in Norfolk, VA.  I learned that this is not the case for Mission Critical
 systems, or for the SIPERNET "classified network".

	Yup.


       As Brad also stated the same.
       All I can say is this, and any ex-RM can say the same (Well RM's are
 extint now they are IT), I never worked in a building that had any windows,
 and that could not stand a very good shaking, that is, if it wasnt
 underground in the first place.
The Pentagon has windows. It also has an ancient system of air pipes aimed at all of the windows, where at a central location they play a radio or otherwise generate sound waves that are then distributed via the air pipes, thus preventing anyone from aiming a laser at the window and being able to bug the office.

Of course, if you're not a flag officer (or equivalent), or you don't work for a flag officer (or equivalent), you won't get any windows. Myself, I worked in the basement, and I walked over a mile each way to go from where I got off the metro, past the concourse between corridors 1 & 10, down to my office on the mezzanine level, on the F ring, between corridors 6 & 7.

--
Brad Knowles, <[email protected]>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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