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Executive Summary
BACKGROUND
The Virginia Community College System serves more than 200,000 users throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. As user count spiraled upward and applications became more advanced, VCCS required a new and improved WAN that could keep pace with and meet the ever-increasing bandwidth and performance demands.
CHALLENGE
VCCS wanted to deploy a cost-effective, best-of-breed technology that would provide intranet and Internet capabilities as well as telephony and data networking integration.
SOLUTION
An entirely new WAN infrastructure was deployed, based on the Cisco Systems LightStreamR 1010 ATM campus/workgroup switch. While the LightStream 1010 seamlessly connects all 38 campuses of the VCCS, a complete routing solution is delivered with Cisco 4000 and 7000 series routers.
RESULTS
Within five months, an entirely new WAN was designed, implemented, and deployed to 38 campuses, giving the VCCS unprecedented network performance. Now VCCS can effectively extend educational opportunities to residents throughout the state, regardless of where they live.
A cornerstone of a community college's foundation is the ability to provide an accessible, college-level education to as many people as possible. The VCCS, which provides educational opportunities to more than 210,000 students at 38 sites throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, is working to ensure that it meets its commitment to the community it serves. Until the 1990s, the network supporting this community was based on point-to-point T1 facilities interconnecting the VCCS campuses. Primarily used to exchange data and e-mail between host systems, including five IBM mainframe data centers and their connected end users, the network had been showing signs of wear for several years. TCP/IP and System Network Architecture (SNA) traffic, routed between nodes, consumed all bandwidth and left insufficient capacity for emerging applications, such as videoconferencing. And, to facilitate distance learning, the college had to supplement its T1 connections with expensive broadcast services. By the mid-1990s, VCCS recognized that it was time for a change.
They wanted to expedite a change that not only would meet the burgeoning bandwidth requirements of increased users and advanced applications but would also keep pace with growth well into the next century.
Change requires vision, and the VCCS wanted to create a new network that would advance educational goals. Arnold R. Oliver, Chancellor for the VCCS, explains, "We embarked on the creation of a new wide-area net-work (WAN) with three main objectives. First, we wanted an intranet connecting all 38 campuses to facilitate reliable information exchange between educators, students, and administrators. Second, we required universal Internet access and synchronized and asynchronous distance learning as vehicles for extending educational services to anyone who wants to learn. And last, we wanted to integrate telephony and data networking services to reduce costs and improve services to both the educational system and to other Commonwealth agencies and contractors."
To realize the college's networking vision, Larry Hengehold, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology Services at VCCS, was chartered with developing a new WAN. Hengehold, who formed alliances with leading institutions and technology vendors, including Cisco Systems, explains, "We joined forces with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Old Dominion University. As a group, we contracted with Bell Atlantic-Virginia (which represents more than 20 local exchange carriers) and Sprint to provide a backbone ATM network." NET.WORK.VIRGINIA, the network created by the educational institutions, is provided by the telephone-companies, and VCCS is responsible for managing networks within its 38 campuses.
"From a cost-benefit standpoint, ATM was clearly the way to go for us," says Hengehold, "For example, for our network to handle compressed video and data required at least two or more T1 connections per campus. It was simply more cost-effective to migrate to ATM, which gave us 45 million bits per second throughput for a much lower cost than what we would have spent on more T1 lines running at three million bits per second---with more T1 lines."
Getting ATM T3 service to the door of each campus was only half the equation. An edge switching solution was required to move WAN traffic on to the internal networks at each campus. Hengehold deployed the Cisco Systems LightStream® 1010 ATM switch as the edge device. "We wanted best-of-breed technology and the LightStream 1010 switch is a leading ATM solution for workgroup/campus applications," notes Hengehold. "Of equal importance, Cisco was also able to deliver a full-service networking solution."
The Cisco LightStream 1010 is the first in a series of campus ATM switching solutions from Cisco Systems. This 5-Gbps modular switch provides fault-tolerant operation and extremely fast throughput, delivering the sophistication and depth of functionality required for true ATM production deployment. Advanced traffic management mechanisms allow for the support of current, bursty, best-effort traffic, while also delivering the quality of service (QoS) guarantees required for the college's future applications, including video. The switch's advanced management functions allow for unprecedented levels of network visibility and control. All this sophistication is transparent and seamless because of the true standards-based, "plug-and-play" capabilities of the LightStream 1010s.
In the VCCS implementation, the LightStream 1010 accepts ATM backbone IP traffic and directs it via an OC-3 fiber link to a Cisco 4700 router. The router provides the interface diversity to support campus IP and IPX networks and also serves as a platform for encapsulating SNA traffic from VCCS mainframes over TCP/IP on the WAN. To accomplish the latter, the router is equipped with a Cisco Channel Interface Processor (CIP) card, an intelligent technology used to connect the router to the mainframe channel, encapsulate SNA traffic for transport over a TCP/IP network, and return the traffic to its original form for communication with other SNA network devices.
The Cisco edge switching solution also separates video traffic contained in the ATM data stream and directs it to cell multiplexers, which interface with compressed video devices from VTEL for two-way video service. This capability enables synchronized distance learning sought by VCCS faculty and students.
With campus edge devices and other network components defined, implementation of the VCCS WAN commenced in mid-1996. By September of that year, VCCS had placed orders for 39 DS3 ATM lines, 39 Cisco LightStream 1010 switches, and 39 Cisco 4700 routers for all campuses, and three Cisco 7010 routers for system operations locations. As equipment was received, teams were commissioned to perform installations. "Each team consisted of a system operations representative, a campus representative and a Cisco representative, says Hengehold. "The Cisco technical support representatives, did a superb job. Virtually everything came up the first time. And by December of 1996, we had completed our final site implementation."
The VCCS ATM solution easily supports an increasing number of servers as well as desktop systems, which are expected to grow from 8000 to almost 12,000 by 1999. And, network performance is exceeding Hengehold's expectations. "There is a significant difference between our old network and our new one," says Hengehold. "The improved performance of the new network is obvious---applications are very responsive." Improved network performance has also stimulated considerable application development activity. "The colleges now have home pages and their own intranet servers," notes Hengehold. "We are also refining and standardizing e-mail, and moving to a POP3 standard, which will replace a collection of Novell Groupwise and SMTP packages."
Education, however, is at the core of the VCCS. Its advanced ATM-based network is efficiently and cost-effectively promoting educational goals. "Now, we can realistically address the serious issues of educational apartheid," observes Arnold R. Oliver. "Historically urban and suburban students have had far more access to courses and programs than students in rural areas. Our network enables the Virginia Community College System to move hundreds of courses and many programs to any part of the Commonwealth, creating what will be thousands of affordable access points, ultimately to nearly every State of Virginia resident's living room."
Posted: Fri Aug 27 09:40:13 PDT 1999
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