IBM And 2nd Graders

IBM has been subcontracted by Merit to provide the software and hardware for Second Grade Science Projects at the supercomputing regional network centers. What IBM gets from this undertaking is not just monetary rewards, however.

NFSnet uses the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) set of transmission standards. TCP/IP, developed in the 1970s by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has left the scientific/research environment to become a major commercial networking success and migration path to the Second Grade Science Projects.

Both TCP/IP and OSI are going to be major vehicles in the movement toward large corporations integrating their multivendor systems, and an important part of such network integration is going to be network management, the brain center of large-scale, enterprisewide networking.

What's in it for me? And here's the Big Blue payoff: IBM has made no secret that it intends to use its NSFnet experience as an important R&D opportunity to fine-tune its Netview network management system for TCP/IP and OSI use.

Professor Douglas Van Houweling, vice-provost of information technology at the University of Michigan, which is a Merit member and an NSFnet user, says he thinks streamlining Netview is IBM's biggest goal.

"The first goal is for IBM to develop technology that allows it to provide and be strongly connected to networks using the DARPA protocols," Van Houweling says. "Coming up with the switching technology and the processors that will back it up is important, and a natural extension of that would be to extend its Netview/PC to manage such networks."

Why did IBM -- and not AT&T or some other telecommunications company -- get the NSFnet switching contract? "Let me make it clear that Merit approached IBM, not the other way around," Van Houweling explains. "We had earlier conversations with AT&T about these [switching] issues, both with regard to regional and national networking, and while some interest was expressed, it was never very strong.

"AT&T, Northern Telecom and the standard telecommunications carriers tend not to have expertise in TCP/IP switching," Van Houweling maintains. "So we needed a computer company in this business, and it was clear we needed a computer company with some resources to invest. It was evident from budget projections with the NSF solicitation that the NSF was not in a position to make a major investment in technology."