'Net disaster plan proposed

Govt. plan to use 'Net when disasters strike could help firms devise such schemes for their own IPnets.

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan
Network World, 08/07/00

PITTSBURGH - The U.S. and Japanese governments have asked the Internet engineering community to develop a capability that would let them prioritize emergency relief communications over the 'Net following a natural disaster.

The capability - dubbed the International Emergency Preparedness Scheme (IEPS) - is similar to a feature found in the public telephone system that lets authorized government agencies send their calls ahead of others in times of crisis.

Although designed for government use, IEPS would provide a framework for companies to create their own response plans for disasters that affect their IP-based networks. Additionally, service providers could develop disaster-relief offerings based on IEPS for their corporate customers.

IEPS would have come in handy at Los Alamos National Laboratories last spring, when out-of-control forest fires swept through the New Mexico facility and forced the lab's network managers to relocate their emergency communications system five times.

"We could really use a capability like this to back up our regular emergency system with voice over IP," says Sandra Turner, a technical staff member at the lab. "IEPS would solve a critical need for organizations to back up different infrastructures."

The U.S. National Communications System office has joined with Japan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications to outline a rough set of requirements for an Internet-based IEPS capability.

The agencies presented their ideas to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) at a meeting Aug. 1.

Priority packets

Both governments are concerned about how to handle emergency communications requirements as voice and data traffic converges over the Internet.

Officials want the ability to mark packets going through the Internet as emergency communications and to put a scheme in place to ensure these packets get preferential treatment.

Using the Internet instead of the public telephone system also provides government agencies with extra services, including prioritized e-mail, multicast and Web browsing, whereas today they have only prioritized voice and fax communications.

Although the U.S. and Japanese governments are leading the charge to develop an Internet-based IEPS capability, the concept was formally recommended in March by the International Telecommunication Union, which represents 189 member countries.

In the U.S., the IEPS would replace the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS), which provides priority local and long-distance service to agencies authorized to use its dedicated 710 area code. Supported by AT&T, WorldCom and Sprint, GETS provides priority communications for PBX and cellular telephone calls and faxes.

"We want to build the next-generation GETS using Internet technologies," says Hal Folts, a senior systems engineer leading the U.S. government's IEPS effort.

Folts asked the IETF to help the U.S. government identify the IP telephony mechanisms required for existing GETS capabilities to interface with and work over the Internet.

He says the U.S. government also wants tools to support prioritized e-mail, instant messaging, Web access, interactive audio and video, multicast and remote database services.

Folts says the U.S. government doesn't expect IEPS to be a free service, just as it pays steep per-call charges under GETS.

He says IEPS has the support of major U.S. telecommunications carriers and network vendors, including AT&T, WorldCom, Sprint, Cisco and Comsat, through the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, which approved a convergence strategy in May.

"IEPS is one of our very highest priorities," Folts says. "It's urgent that we start working on an Internet capability right away."

The Japanese government wants a similar prioritized communications capability for its I Am Alive (IAA) system. The IAA system lets Japanese citizens enter information about their safety and whereabouts and find out similar information about their family members following a natural disaster. Japan's IAA system lets citizens enter information on a telephone, PC or fax and carries that information over the Internet via satellite links to a distributed database.

Disaster recovery

The IAA system was built after the 1995 Kansai earthquake, which killed 6,400 people.

"This was one of the most serious disasters in Japan," says Hiroyuki Ohno, who leads the IAA project.

After that earthquake, the Japanese government began working on the victim information registration and retrieval system that became IAA. Last September, the Japanese government conducted a disaster drill in six cities to test the IAA system.

"Internet technology is well-suited for disaster recovery communications," Ohno says, adding that the IETF could help improve IAA through protocol development, new user interfaces and interoperability testing.

IETF members debated the IEPS requirements at an hour-long meeting that attracted about 200 participants. At the end of the meeting, IETF Chairman Fred Baker asked the U.S. and Japanese government officials to develop a comprehensive set of requirements for IEPS.

He also asked IETF leaders responsible for Internet transport, security and operations protocols to review the requirements in light of capabilities already developed by the group.

"I believe we already have the tools that they need," Baker says, adding that the challenge for government agencies is developing a plan for how to use existing Internet protocols to provide differentiated services in emergency-relief applications. "If they need some other capability, then we can pursue that."

Baker says the IETF would likely publish a document outlining best practices for using Internet protocols in emergency relief applications. Such a document would be useful to companies that want to develop their own schemes for prioritizing network traffic following a natural disaster.

"This is a governmental use of the Internet, but I can imagine corporations having corollary services in their networks," Baker says.

The IETF is expected to discuss IEPS requirements again at its next meeting in San Diego in December.