By the early 1970's, Canada had established some 120 embassies
and missions in more than 100 countries around the around the world and in
widely dispersed locations. There became a growing need to communicate quickly
and easily with the "home office" and with each other. As a result, in 1974,
Canada's Department of External Affairs (now Foreign Affairs Canada),
developed a message switching system called OCAMS (Ottawa Communications
Automated Message Switch). It had a capacity to initially service 64 circuits
but some circuits required two channels which imposed limitations on
scalability.
Canadian National/Canadian Pacific (CN/CP) Telecommunications was
awarded the contract to build the OCAMS system and later, NOCAMS (New Ottawa
Communications Automated Message Switch. NOCAMS was just an expanded version
of OCAMS with better, faster and bigger hardware which could handle up to 512
full duplex circuits. CN/CP chose the Data General Corporation as an Original
Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) for the computing hardware after carefully
evaluating the majority of small computer manufacturers in that era. The
equipment selected for the task had to be efficient, reliable, economical and
scalable.
Faced with developing a software application far more complex than
routine message switching, CN/CP successfully incorporated provisions for
handling classified and unclassified traffic. The application would queue
messages according to established priorities, then switch them over a
world-wide network. In that era, the Department of External Affairs averaged
20,000 messages daily from 24 time zones. With a speed of 5,000 messages per
hour the system was more than capable of meeting immediate requirements.
NOCAMS was designed in a redundant configuration with two Data General
Eclipse S-230 mini computers for message switching and four Data General Nova
3's as the front end. Only one Eclipse and 2 Novas were on-line at any given
time while the other computers remained in standby mode. Both the Nova and
Eclipse machines had a 16 bit Input/Output bus. Eclipse was based on many of
the same concepts as the Nova, but included support for virtual memory and
multitasking. Nova was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by the Data General
starting in 1968 while the Eclipse line was released in early 1974.
To ensure the integrity of Tempest requirements, OCAMS and NOCAMS
systems were installed inside a shielded enclosure which was fabricated
in the UK and shipped to wherever it was needed. External Affairs
referred to it as "The Box".
Data General peripherals included two 192 megabyte moving head disks and
two 24 megabyte fixed head disks. Later, the 192 mb disks were replaced with
units having 600 mb capacity. A Dasher display was used for displaying system
alarms, dumping memory contents, loading and restarting the computers as
well as deleting or adding peripherals or circuits.
Data General Asynchronous Line Multiplexors (ALM's). Multiprocessor
Communications Adapter (MCA's) and Automatic Call Units controlled
system communications. In OCAMS, messages were transmitted over
full-duplex , leased and dial up asynchronous lines of varying speeds. Up to
30 days traffic was stored in an active file for recall or a repeat
transmission. With NOCAMS, the front ends could be scaled up to 512
full-duplex circuits; OCAMS was limited to 128 circuits.
Circuit speeds on OCAMS ranged from 1/4 of 66 baud (quarter speed
circuits) to 9600 baud. When NOCAMS came on line, the quarter speed circuits
were retired thus allowing the 9600 baud interfaces in the front end to pass
more data . Initially this faster throughput was much to fast for the new IBM
PC's which were just coming on stream in the early 1980's. Flow control had to
be employed until the IBM improved the PC to accept a 9600 baud data input
without interruption. OCAMS operated 24 hours per day , 7 days per week with a
recorded uptime of 99.9%.
NOCAMS finished its life cycle under the Larose software. For Personal
Computers located at the missions, he wrote a version of NOCAMS which made the
PC behave (more or less) like a mini NOCAMS switch thus making the operator's
life much easier. This application prepared the NOCAMS message with all
of the prerequisite formatting thus relieving the operator of this tedious
task.
COSICSs, although short lived (1989-1996), was intended to provide
world-wide desktop secure communications. As COSICS was being developed
however, new and better technologies quickly came on the market and the
decision to replace COSICS with a more flexible PC based system called
SIGNET was adopted. Costing some $56 million to develop, COSICS was only
installed in Ottawa and consulates in the United States along with the
Canadian Embassy in Washington DC and the mission in New York. COSICS
consisted of three different sections - CAMS, CATS and CAIPS.
CAMS did the message switching. CATS did the archiving while CAIPS provided
Immigration specific software. For additional information see Canadian Online Secure Information
and Communications System
After the end of COSICS, SIGNET provided a secure messaging system.
During the late 1970's and throughout the 1980's, Canadian National Railways
divested itself of several non-rail transportation activities such as trucking
subsidiaries, a hotel chain, real estate, and telecommunications
companies. The biggest telecommunications property was a company which was
co-owned by CN and CP called CN/CP Telecommunications. Upon its sale in the
1980s, CN/CP was renamed Unitel (United Telecommunications) and upon corporate
affiliation with Rogers Communications, was renamed AT&T Canada.
