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May 21, 2007
MilSPEC VoIP?
So there I was, out at Andrews Air Force Base, at the "Joint Services Open House" -- a mil-speak way of saying "Air Show" and among the first things I wander into is a Ranger standing beside a couple of hard cases stuffed with Cisco routers and switches.
The Rangers deploy anywhere in the world with satellite gear, so they can crank up a full duplex data channel with 768K to 4 Mbps, depending on the satellite and transmitters available.
Part of being in the military is the concept of being able to "Move, shoot, and communicate." Communication is vitally important because you need to tell the guys back at the Pentagon where you are moving to and what you've shot up, while the Generals want to tell you where to go and what the best thing is to shoot at.
Got it?
Anyway, the two box setup can "organically provide up to 4 unclassified and 8 classified phones using VoIP" as well as connect to network servers to set up a class C network.
Depending on location and where they are, they will either bring along the expensive Cisco VoIP phones and some of the cheap RJ-11 corded phones. If the expensive Cisco phones break, it's easy to acquire/scrounge up some more cheap RJ-11 phones.
The Rangers also tote around a Tandberg Video phone/terminal and they had a link back to Fort Bragg. Mr. Ranger (yes, I should have got his name) said that they pretty much exclusively use Tandberg video conferencing gear.
Posted by dmohney at May 21, 2007 10:11 PM