30 January 2000. Thanks to Dan Dupont.
Inside the Pentagon, page 1, January 27, 2000 - Copyright Inside the Pentagon
By Daniel G. Dupont
Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre will soon instruct the services and defense agencies to limit some electronic activities because the Defense Department is "bandwidth-constrained," a situation that could lead to operational impacts if it is not checked.
In a memorandum expected to be issued soon, Hamre will note that the crush of routine tasks carried out using its increasingly important communications networks systems is affecting the military's ability to get information to its troops, particularly those overseas.
Accordingly, Hamre wants all military personnel to become more "disciplined" in their use of military bandwidth by cutting back on the sending of large e-mail attachments, the use of commercial e-mail services and the downloading of large files from the Internet, among other routine tasks.
A draft of the forthcoming memorandum was obtained by Inside the Pentagon. A Defense Department spokeswoman said that it was out for comment and had not yet been issued.
"The Global Internet and the vast private-sector communications network capacity, called bandwidth, have made it possible to provide high volumes of information to practically anywhere, on demand," the draft document states. "The public has become used to processing this information quickly and reliably at low cost. There appears to be an unlimited amount of bandwidth to satisfy expectations.
"However," it continues, "unlike the commercial world, the department is faced with serious restrictions on the amount of information that can be provided to our forces, particularly in remote areas of the world."
While improvements to DOD communications networks "are helping," Hamre's memo adds, "they cannot keep pace with the demand."
In fact, he states, "significant delays have been experienced in receiving mission-type information due to congestion in our networks overseas.
"This situation is primarily due to unacceptably large routine, non-operational documents and briefings sent over those networks and could have serious operational impacts," Hamre states.
The draft memo shows Hamre intends to warn the services and defense agencies that discipline is key to ensuring "what is sent contains only what is necessary."
The memo contains a list of guidelines for various tasks undertaken across the military on a daily basis. These include briefings sent via e-mail, which "should use graphics sparingly and only to get the essential points across," it states. "Rich context pictures requiring large amounts of memory (greater than 1 megabyte) should be avoided. Where possible, text and graphics should be in black and white. Background graphics such as logos and seals should be only on the title slide of a briefing."
Most DOD briefings, of course, are graphic-laden, and they are getting more so. These briefings not only bottle things up when they are e-mailed, they also cause problems when they are downloaded from web sites, the memo states. This practice should also be curtailed, according to the draft guidelines, which would direct DOD personnel to download large briefings only when "absolutely necessary and for official business.
"However," the draft memo adds, "having interested parties 'pull' briefings off a web site is preferable to sending lengthy files to large lists of addressees. Transmission of highly shared documents to webmasters for posting to and sharing across the entire organization is highly encouraged."
The guidelines suggest eschewing mass e-mailing of attachments in favor of sending interested parties links to documents available on the Internet. However, if briefings are attached to e-mails, they should be compressed as much as possible.
Hamre also wants personnel to use government-provided e-mail services and avoid commercial outfits such as Yahoo!, Hotmail and others. "Bandwidth associated with the use of web-based e-mail is excessive and can readily constrict communications paths," the draft memo states.
Subscriptions to newsgroups, which keep DOD personnel involved and engaged on various topics, are to be "limited to the absolute minimum required to support the organization's missions and functions. Individual personal subscriptions to newsgroups that are not mission-related should be strongly discouraged. Additionally, personal web services such as Pointcast are not permitted on DOD systems," according to the guidelines.
Other guidelines cover the use of "reply" and "reply to all" e-mail features, limiting the number of copies sent to other parties, and avoiding the use of the "return receipt" function as routine procedures.
The draft guidelines also allude to the possible curtailing of Internet surfing. "Bandwidth may be further conserved by imposing web-browsing restrictions," the memo states. "This can be accomplished by identifying and applying good knowledge management practices such as use of intranets to post or download common-use documents. Bandwidth may also be conserved by employing user lists or by removing browsing privileges through a proxy server."
Video teleconferencing is also subject to bandwidth constraints, states the memo, which urges compression techniques for all VTC activities.
Everyone who receives the guidelines -- including warfighting commanders-in-chief and joint task force commanders -- must use it to put in place their own policies for both peacetime and crisis operations. "Guidelines for bandwidth conservation management during periods of surge where increases in mission-essential information are anticipated," it adds.