- (Reuters) -- The Defense Department said Friday it planned
to link its high-tech weaponry, battlefield sensors and other communications
systems to an upgraded Internet operating system within five years.
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- John Stenbit, the Pentagon's chief information officer,
said the current system, which the Defense Department helped develop decades
ago, was too limited to meet the needs of today's technology-driven armed
forces.
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- It was not secure enough and was too prone to dropping
information "packets" used in such things as videoconferencing,
he told reporters. Another shortcoming, he said, was the limited, telephone-like
numbering system that underpins familiar domain names such as www.yahoo.com.
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- Stenbit said the Pentagon planned a five-year switchover
to the new system, or protocol, because he expected a majority of cellphones,
laptops and other devices that connect to the Internet to use the new approach
by then.
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- "My best guess is that it's going to happen commercially
before 2008 or I wouldn't have chosen 2008," he told reporters. "If
we don't start buying the stuff today, we're in trouble whenever it happens."
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- The Internet's current operating system, IPv4, has been
in use for almost 30 years by the Defense Department.
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- The new standard, known as Internet Protocol Version
6, or IPv6, being developed by an independent standard-setting body, will
help glue together the key components of the Defense Department's so-called
Global Information Grid -- its sensors, weapons, aircraft, information
systems and digitally linked forces.
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- The evolution toward the new standard must be taken into
account for all purchases starting Oct. 1, Stenbit, assistant secretary
of defense for networks and information integration, told the armed services
in a memo.
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- Additional reporting by Jim Wolf
- © 2003 Reuters
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