Department of Veterans Affairs Telecommunications Modernization Program

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Department of Veterans Affairs Telecommunications
Modernization Program
Turning Slogan Into Reality

• Sally L. Wallace
• ADAS for Information Technology Operations
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• sally.wallace_at_va.gov

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Background

• VA is the largest civilian department of
  Government
• Three Administrations (VHA, VBA, NCA)
• 173 Medical Centers 800 Community Based
  Outpatient Clinics
• 57 Regional Benefit Offices -- 120 National
  Cemeteries
• 220,000 employees
• Many business partners require network access
• VAs Customer base
• Of the 48 million men women who served in
  uniform, throughout our nations history, 25
  million are alive today with 4 million being
  served by the Department

IT is of Strategic Importance To the Departments
Mission
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Summer 2001 As Is Circuit BasedData Network
Architecture

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Extended Performance BasedData Network
Architecture
As of February 2005
VISN 7
VISN 4
ONE VA Performance Based Backbone
VISN 17
Phase IV
VACO
VISN 20
VISN 5
VISN 22
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Summary of TMP Design

• Scalable architecture to meet current future
  requirements
• Highly survivable design supports COOP and COG
• Tightly coupled with the Enterprise Cyber
  Security Infrastructure Project (ECSIP) to
  provide all Internet access and all dial up
  service through the core nodes
• Circuitry to support the logical IP architecture
• Standardizes and Simplifies

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TMP Performance Results

• Increased usable bandwidth by over 100 across
  the backbone
• Assured bandwidth allocated to production traffic
  is protected from non-production traffic
• Improved provisioning time across core
• Improved backbone routing stability
• Prepared the backbone for QoS implementation
• Reduced core nodes from 6 to 4, core circuit
  connections from 88 to 38, and number of point to
  point circuits used to bypass current backbone