TRW puts Air Force network on automatic pilot. (TRW Inc. creates network management software for Air Force's Ogden Air Logistics Command center) (includes related article on object-oriented programming) (Enterprise Computing/Management)

Although TRW Inc. has performed its share of defense work for the United States Air Force, it's also left its mark on the computer technology employed by this branch of the service.

Five years ago the Ogden, Utah, office of TRW designed and installed a 3,000-node network at the Air Force's Ogden Air Logistics Command center (ALC), which warehouses Air Force supplies and maintains aircraft. TRW constructed a broadband Ethernet LAN that serves as a communications backbone for the end-user terminals, PCs, peripherals, and host computers located throughout the ALC. The LAN also provides access to Air Force communication networks and logistic systems located elsewhere.

Keeping up with changes. Over time, the ALC, which is also home to a test range and a few fighter aircraft groups, discovered that manually monitoring and maintaining this complex system was a burden. Because personnel turned over constantly, devices and addresses continually changed, and day-to-day network traffic varied dramatically, causing intermittent bottlenecks. There was also a hodgepodge of new and old equipment on the network, resulting in …