Health Care

PenTeleData and
Geisinger Health System

Founded in 1915, Geisinger Health System has continually made technological advances that have helped provide the highest quality medical care available. Geisinger is nationally recognized for both its quality of care, and its highly trained physicians.

Geisinger's partnership with PenTeleData began over five years ago. After pursuing multiple options, Geisinger chose PenTeleData because they offered the most cost-effective and reliable Internet access and connectivity available. Prior to partnering with PenTeleData, Geisinger used the Internet for basic research, but as time passed, the Internet became a necessity for connecting telecommuters, employees, partners and vendors.

"Fifteen years ago there were a couple of terminals and a printer in each clinic connected via a leased 9600 bps analog line to a central billing system. Ten years ago a couple more terminals and printers were added for laboratory use, and the lines were upgraded to 56k digital," explains Bob Murcek, Director of Network Infrastructure and Support for Geisinger.

Since then, Geisinger has upgraded all of these lines to T1's to facilitate having a computer in every exam room and take advantage of the electronic health record (EHR).

Internet access enables telecommuters, employees, partners and vendors to stay connected with one another. It also facilitates online access of medical information, appointment scheduling, etc., for the more than 6,000 users.

"EHRs increase the quality of care in many ways, which include providing your family physician with instant and detailed access to any tests that have been requested, but EHRs also mean that network outages now greatly inconvenience hundreds of patients." Murcek also says, "PenTeleData is the only carrier we work with that provides specific advance warning of scheduled down times," Murcek explains.

PenTeleData's EtherPoint service provides speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second and is a custom-tailored solution designed for fast-growing businesses like Geisinger.

So, why did they choose PenTeleData? "Initially, we liked the fact that PenTeleData is a regional provider with a strong presence in Geisinger's footprint. Most of our telecommuters connect via PenTeleData Internet service, which means their traffic stays on PenTeleData's fast, reliable network and never sees the Internet. This is also important when we use PenTeleData Internet access for affordable backup connectivity at our remote sites," says Murcek.

For Geisinger, telecommuting is very important-many of their physicians use it to extend the time they have to complete paperwork for the day. They can go home and log in later to finish up anything from earlier in the day. Some of their specialists use the system to assist with "unusual cases at unusual hours." And, of course, the Information Technology employees use telecommuting capabilities in order to speed up responses to technical problems as they arise.

With needs such as these, reliable service and connectivity is a must, and Geisinger has found PenTeleData's services to be reliable and its support knowledgeable and helpful: "Given the reliability of PenTeleData's services, the strong customer support, and the expertise available, we're hoping that PenTeleData will be providing a larger percentage of our telecom services in the future," says Murcek.

What does the future hold in store for Geisinger Health System? In general, technologies including streaming video and digital imaging will make faster connections to remote clinics and the Internet necessary. The major goals are security-related due to increasing sophistication of hackers trying to interfere with operations or illegally obtain medical information.

Through the partnership with PenTeleData, Geisinger believes they can achieve their data, security, and networking goals.

Dear valued customers,

It's already July-summer is in full swing-and that means vacations, fun, and sun! With all the excitement of summer in the air, I invite you to stop, find a shaded area and take a look at our newsletter this quarter. It's packed with lots of useful information and other exciting news!

For our feature this quarter, we take a look at our partner in health care, Geisinger, who knows that top-notch medical care requires top-notch technology behind it. That's why they've chosen PenTeleData as their primary Internet and data transport provider. But, Geisinger has some big plans for additional PenTeleData services-read on to find out what the future holds in store for Geisinger and PenTeleData!

Also, don't miss our informative piece about Internet2-yes, Internet2! To give you an idea, Internet2 is an ultra high-speed net-

work currently connecting educational institutions and even some businesses. It's being used to perform research for the technologies of tomorrow. If you haven't already heard about it, you'll definitely want to check this out.

Finally, if you still feel like you're fighting an uphill battle against all that spam e-mail still circulating on the Internet, there could still be hope! Take a look at our article about Microsoft's Sender ID and Yahoo's DomainKeys-could they really spell spam relief? Read on to find out.

That's it for this quarter, so we hope you enjoy the newsletter. Don't forget to have some fun in the sun this summer, and we'll see you again in the fall!

Sincerely,
John H. Williams
PenTeleData - General Manager

For those customers who have not yet signed up for ProLog X5 and have a ProLog dial-up account, you can add the ProLog X5 accelerator for only $1 extra per month and surf the web up to 5 times faster and have 5 times more fun. The ProLog X5 accelerator is a quick download too. Call Customer Service at 800.804.5783 or go to www.ptd.net to sign up today!

Just a reminder that our ProLog Easy Pay program allows you to have your monthly invoice amount deducted from your checking or savings account-no more time and money spent on check writing and mailing. All you have to do is sign up and your bill will be paid on time each month with no hassle to you.

If you have not signed up yet, sign up today by calling Customer Service at 800.804.5783 or log on to www.ptd.net and click on 'ProLog Easy Pay'.

Bring your laptop or any hand-held wireless Internet device and grab a bite to eat at any of PenTeleData's ProLog Unleashed Wi-Fi hotspots. For an up-to-date list of hotspots, please visit: www.prologunleashed.com/locations.shtml

PenTeleData is giving one lucky winner a Family 4-Pack of Camelbeach Waterpark Tickets in Tannersville, PA. The tickets are free passes that are valid through out the 2005 operating season.

Rules of the Game:

- Give the correct answer to all three questions listed to the right.

- Then figure out the theme (what they all have in common).

To enter you must answer all three questions to the right and what the theme is between them. Send an e-mail to chat@corp.ptd.net with the following information: your name, address, daytime phone number (where we can contact you), three answers to the questions and the theme. All entries must be received by 7/31/05.

Good Luck! PenTeleData

1) What was the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence?

2) What city was the Declaration of Independence signed in?

3) Which state, in the signing of the declaration of Independence, had the most signers on the final Declaration?

Everyone wants to find new ways to rid the Internet of spam. Plenty of possible solutions are in research and development stages, but two leading companies have begun testing their solutions to the spam problem: Microsoft's Sender ID, and Yahoo Inc.'s DomainKeys. The real questions are how do these solutions work, and do they have any hope of saving us from the flood of spam?

Before we take a look at the possible solutions, we need to discuss a few things about spam. First, most spam messages do not actually originate from the e-mail address or domain that they claim - this is known as "spoofing." The idea behind both Sender ID and DomainKeys is to authenticate the source of every e-mail message. In other words, they plan to match up the supposed domain the message was sent from to the actual domain.

For example, if I decided to spoof a message from the "yahoo.com" domain, I might place 'myname@yahoo.com' on the "From" line of my message and alter the domain that it appears to come from to "yahoo.com". But, if I send it through the PenTeleData mail server (mail.ptd.net), it will actually come from the ptd.net domain. According to the Sender ID and DomainKeys plans, my message could be rejected by mail servers using these technologies.

How would DomainKeys figure out that this message is spoofed? Let's use the example above to see how it works. First, if the mail.ptd.net server is setup for DomainKeys, it would attach a digital signature to my outgoing e-mail message with a private key. Each e-mail system using DomainKeys has its own unique public and private key pair. The private key is used to create the digital signature and the public key validates the digital signature and is published in DNS (Domain Name System) records.

My message now makes its way across the Internet to the recipient's mail server. This mail server extracts the digital signature from my message and looks at the "From" domain in the message header - yahoo.com. It then goes to DNS for the yahoo.com public key. DomainKeys will now notice that the digital signature on my message created with the ptd.net private key does not match the yahoo.com public key, indicating that my message is a spoof. At this point, the recipient's mail server is free to reject, quarantine, or otherwise deal with the message.

What about Sender ID? Sender ID performs a very similar routine to Yahoo DomainKeys, except that it verifies the sender by looking up and comparing IP addresses instead of using public and private keys.

Now we're left with the question of whether or not Sender ID or DomainKeys can deliver us from the piles of spam we find in our inboxes every day. The answer is a solid maybe. Many experts agree they have the potential to reduce the amount of spam by authenticating the source of messages, but they may not catch all spam. However, Sender ID and DomainKeys can greatly reduce the number of spam messages that make it into your inbox-and that's at least a good start.

At the time of this writing, the progress of Microsoft's Sender ID has once again been slowed. The open-source software community has raised concerns about licensing and as a result, they have dropped support of the new technology. The future is uncertain for Sender ID, but DomainKeys appears to remain a contender in the fight against spam.