Defense Information System Network (DISN) - An overview

This overview of DISN is a summary of what DISN is today, tomorrow and a projection of the future. It begins with a large number of non-integrated legacy networks that are substantial in size and the initial integration of these systems to improve performance and reduce cost. Emerging requirements for image, voice and data are projected to push DISN into the gigabit arena to support the information requirements of DoD that are associated with “new ways of doing business”. Enabling technologies are progressing on many fronts and are producing performance at a cost that was only “dreamed about” a decade previously. How DISN might use these technologies in its evolution is discussed. DISN´s overall goal for post 2000 is summarized. The potential is high for significant overall cost savings and performance improvement as a result of a DISN that allows consolidation and centralization of a number of functions and also enables distributed interactive processes such as modelling and simulation, joint planning, exercises, computing, conferencing, et. al., all of which are discussed in other papers