Posted on 10/18/2001 3:01:50 PM PDT by WaterDragon
The United States government has begun the process of building its own private Internet for the exclusive use of its myriad agencies. It has called on the US telecommunications industry this month to provide information and suggestions on how to achieve this.
The idea for a secure "standalone" Internet for use by civil servants came from the newly-appointed presidential adviser for cyberspace security, Mr. Richard Clarke.
He revealed in a statement last week that the proposal pre-dated the Sept 11 terrorist attacks. "Planning for this network has been going on for several months."
However, the project is driven by concerns of security.
"A key feature of this network, called GovNet, is that it must be able to perform its functions with no risk of penetration or disruption from users on other networks, such as the Internet," said Mr. Clarke, the nation's counter-terrorism chief for more than a decade, who was appointed to his new post last week.
He has long warned that the US is vulnerable ot a "digital Pearl Harbor" as the country's enemies could turn to personal computers and the Internet to shut down communications networks, power grids and other "critical infrastructure", causing death and destruction.
Last week, he asked the General Services Administration, which is responsible for providing service and equipment to the US government, to spearhead the GovNet project.
The GSA responded last Wednesday by posting on its website (www.fts.gsa.gov/ govnet/govnet.doc) a Request For Information (RFI), listing the broad goals for GovNet.
(snip)
In an invitation to companies to propose ways to set up the private network, the government said one solution would be "to build a completely dedicated network" based on dedicated fiber-optic cables. Also, all hardware would be use solely for that network.
Because of the size of the US government and the area of coverage, the project would result in fairly large-scale purchases of hardware withing a tight time-frame.
The government wants GovNet up and running within six months of the award of the contract.
My guess is they'll be running it on IPV6, which "our version" is just starting to migrate to. This means they'll have the prime address spaces reserved, and will require that the industry standards be written to prevent a mis-configured router from being able to route between "our" version and "their" version. In short, they'll end up screwing with "our" next version of the internet before we even get there.
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