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CenturyLink Providing DoD's Equivalent of Internet2
Nerval's Lobster writes "Network provider CenturyLink has won a $750 million contract from the Department of Defense to network the latter's sites together as part of the military equivalent of Internet2. The contract calls for CenturyLink to connect as many as 150 DoD locations nationwide with a dedicated high-speed fiber-optic network, with speeds ranging from 50 Mbits/s to up to 100 Gbits/sec. Given that the contract also calls for the telco to deploy Ethernet, IP and optical services, it's likely that the 50-Mbits/s threshold is a per-user basis, with site-to-site communications in the gigabit range. It's all part of the U.S. Department of Defense's High Performance Computing Modernization Program (DoD HPCMP), which aims to solve complicated and time-consuming problems with massively-parallel computing and very high-speed networking. The HPCMP program was formed in 1992, with the aim of connecting what had been separate facilities and test labs developed and maintained by the Army, Navy, and Air Force. That network is known as the Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN) network, which currently uses an OC-48 optical network providing 2.4 Gbit/s between facilities, according to the military."
And all I get is 1.5mbps DSL because they are still using ancient copper out in my neck of the woods. C'mon... PLEASE.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
If the military's current network gets 2.4Gb/sec, I wonder how Google Fiber is offering 1Gb/sec to end users for such a low rate? How are they getting all this data to the backbone, and how are they actually getting 1Gb/sec to these people? Are they just touting the interface speed knowing that it won't be utilized to just scare the larger ISPs and manipulate the market?
Sig: I stole this sig.
2.4Gbit/sec used to be a big deal, now it is not
The backbones are all 100+Gbit/sec (often 10x10Gbit/sec or multiple 40Gbit/sec interfaces)
My business routinely moves 20-30Gbit/sec of data around the internet (video streaming) and during large events, we can do 100Gbit/sec for a few hours.
Why is it called internet2 if they are only upgrading the cables?
Because your home network isn't plugged into $100K+ routers with the military's availability SLAs.
Once upon a time the militry classes PGP as a weapon "US export regulations regarding cryptography remain in force, but were liberalized substantially throughout the late 1990s. Since 2000, compliance with the regulations is also much easier. PGP encryption no longer meets the definition of a non-exportable weapon, and can be exported internationally except to seven specific countries and a list of named groups and individuals[14] (with whom substantially all US trade is prohibited under various US export controls)." via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy So, I wonder if they also class this fast fibre offering from Google as a weapon?
100 Gbits/sec? Does that even exist?! What kind of hardware you need to achieve those speeds?!
Well, the ROI has to include kickbacks...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That may get better if they build a WDM network and have the DoD foot the bill for the whole thing and take only 1/44th of the capacity. I'd love to get a contract like that.
Learn to love Alaska
Are they also going to require the DOD to buy a POTS network to go with their their data network an charge them for both?
I read that as "WMD network" and wondered if military involvement was advisable.
I wonder if the military will get better.
People who are prepared to pay for dedicated links with service level agreements will get better service than people who buy cheap "broadband" connections.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
So first off, there are different kinds of fiber. The FTTH stuff you tend to see is PON, passive optical network. You can look on Wikipedia for a pretty good article on the details but more or less it is a shared type of connection where everyone is on the same connection. A Point to multipoint kind of deal. Well, that costs less than doing direct point-to-point fiber as you see in backbones. The downside is, of course, you are all sharing the same bandwidth. If there's 100 people on one line you all share the bandwidth (via TDMA usually). Same basic idea as cable modems.
The other thing then is oversubscribing the backhaul. When a provider gives you cheap 1 gpbs fiber, they aren't providing backhaul all the way up the chain to make sure you 1 gbps no matter what. They oversubscribe at every level. So say there's 100 people on your segment. That's 100:1 oversubscription right there. That then connects back to a datacenter and, say, 30 other segments connect to a switch, which has a 10 gbps uplink to the core. Now you are 3000:1. The core then only has so much out to the higher level of the network as so on.
Now that works fine for users. If you've ever worked in a big office environment or university it is the same way. You might have gig to your desktop, then that switch with 24 people only has gig to the floor switch, which only has gig to the main switch, and then only a gig off to the Internet. However it still can be fast. Reason is that you don't all use your connections full bore all the time. You get some data, and then it sits idle. So long as people play nice and share, it can be fast despite the oversubscription and still be cheap.
However that's a real cost difference than backbone lines. Taking something like the DoD's network where it is a dedicated OC-48 connection from each site back to some central infrastructure, and probably then larger lines between the different infrastructure sites, well that is a bunch more money.
Now as someone pointed out the DoD's net is also outdated, but there are also real cost differences for different levels of service. Also shit gets more expensive in an exponential fashion as bandwidth goes up. Getting a switch fabric that handles a few gigabits of traffic is easy. You can get a lil' 24 port 10/100 switch for like $70. You want gig? Still pretty cheap, $180ish. Ok how about 10 gig? That's more like $8000 and it doesn't even have interfaces in it, you'll have to buy SPF+ units for each port. 100gig? I don't even know, those are the "call us for pricing" kinds of switches. Easily 6 figures or more for 24 ports.
Gig technology is pretty cheap these days, so you can provide it to end users pretty cheap... so long as you do plenty of sharing on the backhaul.
Now when you think about what the military's networks are, you've got:
MILNET that came out of ARPANET and remained the military portion of it.the Nonclassified Internet Protocol Router Network subnets of the internet
SIPRNet which is the "Secure Internet Protocol Router Network", a separate-from but parallel-to the regular internet network used by the military for secure comms to transmit classified information.
So I'm guessing that the military's Internet2 is going to be a 100Gbit fiber at the ends network which is being deployed by whomever to allow for a SIPRnet-like secure communication channel for classified information over a parallel-network which is separate from (and securely separate from) the regular internet and the "regular" Internet2 accessible to universities created by the internet2 consortium. So like Internet2, but more secure and separate.
Good luck with that, DOD. CenturyLink *sucks*.
Did they really go to all of this trouble to impersonate the title Anonymous Coward?
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
Maybe they're copying Sun's version numbering system for Java.
For those who don't know, Java 1.2 was (even officially) referred to as Java 2. Every subsequent version of Java up until 1.5 was always referred to as Java 2.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
The DREN network... Was I the only one that thought of Farscape when I read the name?
Oh man, we are so screwed!
Lowest bidder, baby!
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
After acquiring Qwest (formerly USWest) they found themselves with a lot of cable but not quite the subscription levels they needed to maintain their cash flow. At the time Qwest was also recovering from when their CEO Joseph Nacchio was caught cooking the books / insider trading.
The Centurylink union workers' contracts have been being extended daily and weekly since they are up for renegotiating. This process has been going slow and there have been talks of strikes. Hopefully this 3/4 billion dollar contract will give the telecommunications union employees some room to breath and the contracts will be finalized without any cuts to their healthcare coverage (reportedly the main thing up on the chopping block.)
The Blade Itself
I'm reading all these comments about centurylink DSL sucking and frequent disconnects. I've never had a bad experience with them. Never once had to call about a problem and never once been disconnected. I'm wondering where you're located? If you can only get 1.5 Mbs you're probably out at the end of the loop.
The Blade Itself