Louisville snags major technology win

City is one of 25 connection points nationwide for latest Internet network Business First of Louisville - June 15, 2007

http://tinyurl.com/ytyyxz

University of Louisville technology czars recently staged a coup of sorts that has brought Kentucky a remarkable technology victory.

There's a lot of techno-talk involved to explain how they snagged an invaluable networking resource for Kentucky. But suffice to say that the long-term benefits for economic development and growth of research initiatives are huge, according to the principals involved.

Such future success stories are possible because some part-daring/part-ingenious U of L tech administrators finagled a rare connection point along the newly developing, super-fast network resource nicknamed "NewNet."

This hook up is 10 times faster than the national network that research universities have been using for the past decade, which already was a significant improvement over the commercial Internet most consumers and businesses access today.

So what are the possibilities?

Imagine a Louisville surgeon being able to broadcast a real-time video of a hand transplant in high definition to medical professionals at hospitals and medical schools across the country.

 DoJ Files Deficiency Petition with FCC over J-STD-025B
June 7, 2007

On May 15th 2007, the Dept. of Justice (as represented by the FBI, DEA and National Security Division) filed a "Petition for Expedited Rulemaking to Establish Technical Requirements and Standards Pursuant to Section 107(b) of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act", specifically in regard to J-STD-025B where it covers CDMA2000 packet data wireless services.

So what does this mean? Section 107 of CALEA covers the "Technical Assistance" portion of the CALEA law and during 2003 when the TIA and ATIS standards bodies were developing the JSTD25B standard, Law Enforcement (represented by the FBI at those meetings), raised several concerns over what they felt were technical deficiencies in the standard. Those concerns were never adequately satisfied in their opinion but the standards bodies moved forward anyway and the standard became effective in January of 2004. In March 2004 the standard (which at that point was only a "Trial Use" standard) was submitted for ballot to become an ANSI standard. In August 2006, J-STD-025B was adopted as an ANSI standard. At that time Law Enforcement began formulating a response to articulate the deficiencies they felt were still part of the standard. On May 15th (coincidence that it was the day after the May 14th deadline for Broadband and VoIP compliance? Probably not) they filed their official request for rulemaking to address these technical concerns.

So what are they asking for?