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ISDN SYSTEMS ELSEVIER Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28 (1996) 589-597

G-MING: a high performance multi-service telecommunications infrastructure for the Greater Manchester educational

community

Peter Mills a, Jim Strom b, * a Manchester Computing Centre, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, UK Ml3 9PL

b Department of Computing, Manchester Metropolitan University, Chester Street, Manchester, UK MI 5GD

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of the G-MING project (Greater Manchester Inter Network Group), a feasibility study aimed ai the provision of a high performance multi-set-vice telecommunications infrastructure within the Greater Manchester region for the educational community. Specifically, the study was to determine the future scope of G-MING, the services it could provide, the technology it should use and the contractual basis upon which it could operate in the future. The paper serves to illustrate the analysis procedure and technical considerations in determining the provision of a metropolitan area network based on ATM technology.

Keywords: Education; MAN; ATM

1. Introductiom

The G-MING concept of a pervasive telecom- munications infrastructure for the education community in Greater Manchester arose from a number of parallel development opportunities and problems ,which revealed the need for a more cohesive prov:ision of telecommunication facili- ties; some of these were: * Increasing reliance on Information Technology

for the business needs of the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFC) institutions and their dependence on a strong and effective telecom- munications infrastructure.

- The liberalisation of telecommunications pro-

* Corresponding author. E-mail: j.strom@doc.mmu.ac.uk.

vision giving the opportunity to develop new ways of providing services,

- The potential cost saving of adopting self pro- vided telecommunications.

* Conclusions reached from the work under- taken in providing SuperJANET: * that there are cost savings in providing

Metropolitan Area Networks (MANS) rather than buying extra connections on a national network;

* that there are considerable restrictions on usage when purchasing from the main PIT suppliers.

- New services required to provide business ad- vantage to the HEFC institutions.

* An increased need to provide telecommunica- tions infrastructure to buildings remote from main campuses (i.e. Halls of Residence).

0169-7552/96/$15.00 0 1996 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved SSDI 0169-7552:95)00088-7

590 P. Mills, J. Strom /Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28 (1996) 589-597

- Increased cooperation of certain central ser- vices (e.g. Libraries) which require an en- hanced telecommunications infrastructure. From these the vision for G-MING was born:

to create a high performance multi-service telecommunications infrastructure for the Greater Manchester Educational Community.

Behind this initiative are six HEFC institutions in Greater Manchester: the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), the Royal Northern College of Music, the University Col- lege Salford, the University of Manchester (Owens), the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the University of Salford. The consortium has some 70000 students and represents the largest educa- tional precinct in Europe. Four of the campuses are located adjacent to each other in the south- ern part of Manchester with the other two situ- ated on the northern side of the city at a distance of some 3 kilometres away from the other institu- tions. All the institutions have teaching and ac- commodation buildings widely scattered through- out the area, and face common difficulties in providing voice and data access to/from central buildings where key resources are located.

To progress the G-MING vision to a practical reality the six institutions agreed a one-year study and set up a team based at the Manchester Computing Centre (MCC) to investigate the op- portunities open to such a development. A Mem- orandum of Understanding was signed in July 1993 and the study began in August 1993. This paper covers the outcome of the work carried out by the G-MING study.

2. Service requirements

One of the major strands of the G-MING study was to capture the needs and requirements of various groups within the institutions for a high performance telecommunications infrastruc- ture. The purpose of the information capture process was to both identify and prioritise future bandwidth requirements and locations to be con- nected.

The scope of the G-MING study was that the proposed infrastructure should not only connect the main campuses of the participating institu- tions, but also allow the connection of the remote buildings of each institution. One effect of this would be that services that might appear to be internal to an institution would actually cross the G-MING backbone when a remote building was connected via G-MING rather than directly to an institution.

The information capture procedure was under- taken by meeting with key service groups within each institution. These were: - Library services. * Telephone providers. - Data network providers. * Estates and services (heating control,security,

etc.). * Audio visual services.

A general principle emerged that each institu- tion was in advance of others in the provision of particular facilities, but the other institutions, generally, saw the need in the future to provide those facilities. Hence, a prediction of future need in the medium term (2-4 years) could be obtained by assuming each institution would de- velop services matching the institution most ad- vanced in any one area requiring telecommunica- tions.

2.1. Library services

A Consortium of Academic Libraries In Manchester (CALIM) was investigating ways of sharing resources between most of the G-MING institutions and had already identified the need for an improved and extended telecommunica- tions infrastructure to facilitate their future plans.

The way that library material would be dis- tributed was obscured not by limitations in tech- nology, but in knowing what approach publishers would take in the future to having material net- worked. Equally, in such areas as Electronic Journals it was unclear as to how on-line publish- ing of research would be regarded in academic appraisal in comparison to printed research pa- pers. This made it very difficult to accurately predict the future bandwidth requirements neces-

P. Mills, J. Strom/Computer Networks and ISDN Systems -38 (19961 589-597 591

saty for library services, however existing applica- tions were: - OPAC facilities: This has a low bandwidth re-

quirement per user, but would have an increas- ing number of simultaneous users, particularly from remote sites when it becomes possible to reserve books.

- Information database services: A large number of databases existed which were available on CD-ROM and some institutions were already providing joint access to their individual ser- vices.

* Document delivery: Electronic delivery of docu- ments currently sent by post was an important development in library service.

- On-line electronic journals: As part of the Su- perJANET application projects the Institute of Physics had made available a number of jour- nals giving images as well as textual material. This did require quite large bandwidths (1 Mbits/s per user) for effective use.

* Prouision qf research material: Again as part of the SuperJANET application projects a demonstration of the possibilities of providing access to old material such as the Ryland Ge- nizah fragments had been undertaken. This also required a large bandwidth (1 Mbits/s per user) for effective use. As well as collaboration between campuses a

number of the libraries had a distributed set up and required connectivity to their institution’s remote buildings.

2.2. Telephone providers

Statistics from the current telephone ex- changes indicated that there was not a great deal of scope for effective cost savings by interlinking the exchanges because of the low number of telephone calls between the institutions.

The main area where G-MING could be effec- tive would be to provide voice links to remote buildings of institutions in place of private cir- cuits rented from PTT’s.

Some of the institutions had voice mail systems and in the future these would be interlinked to E-mail systems which would increase require- ments on bandwidth.

The most significant opportunity emerging from the consultation with the telephone ex- change providers was the high expenditure on external telephone charges (local, long distance and international). Several of the potential infras- tructure suppliers could see significant cost re- ductions if they were able to provide one infras- tructure to service both the voice and the data requirements of the G-MING institutions.

2.3. Data network providers

Each institution had Ethernet (10 Mbits/s) networks and most either had or planned FDDI (100 Mbits/s) networks. Two institutions had ex- tensive connectivity to remote buildings; one of these was already sharing its links between the data network and the telephone system.

The services requiring most bandwidth from the “advanced” services of each site were: * Teaching of CAD. - Provision of networked information access (e.g.

WWW) for both teaching and general pur- poses.

* Centralised fileserving. * Centralised filestore dumping. . Services such as E-mail requiring low band-

widths for individual users, but requiring large numbers of simultaneous accesses.

2.4. Estates and services

A number of areas were identified as potential users of a G-MING infrastructure: - Access to remote buildings for control equip-

ment: At present, if remote access existed, this was carried out by dial-up systems.

* Access to centralised facilities: Remote “out- posts” of the Estates and Services departments needed access to administrative computers and to CAD information.

* Remote surveillance: Although this was consid- ered to be a potential use for G-MING, a concern was the need for a very rapid response time when incidents of vandalism or robbery occurred; a centralised system was felt to miti- gate against this.

592 P. Mills, J. Strom /Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28 (1996) 589-597

2.5. Audio visual services

An area identified as a large potential user of a telecommunications infrastructure were the Audio Visual groups of each institution: * Video conferencing : Audio conferencing was al-

ready used for meetings because of the re- moteness of some buildings. The extension to video-conferencing was seen as a natural pro- gression, providing a much better basis for holding remote meetings and hence producing savings in travel time.

* Multimedia language access: One of the institu- tions was preparing multimedia language courses that ran on PCs with sound cards. At present these were located in a single physical cluster, however access to the course material from anywhere on campus and from halls of residence would greatly expand the usefulness of such Computer Aided Learning material.

2.6. Summary of requirements

The use of a G-MING backbone network for the above services would fall into two general areas: * Access to/from external networks (e.g. Super-

JANET, NHS). - Access to/from remote campuses/buildings

that were linked via the G-MING backbone. Calculating the bandwidth requirements for

the G-MING backbone (or for that matter the links from remote campuses/buildings) is diffi- cult. A great deal of traffic would be local to a site and hence would put no load on the G-MING backbone. There are simplistic rules used in net- work design that could be applied, for instance, the “80/20” rule which says that 80% of traffic at a level is entirely local and only 20% goes exter- nally. If we applied this rule to the LAN/MAN/WAN we would get a ratio of 25:5:1. Since we know the WAN (i.e. SuperJANET) is 155 Mbits/s, then the MAN should be at 775 Mbits/s and the aggregate LAN capacity should be 4 Gbits/s. Dividing this total LAN capacity equally between the six institutions gives a LAN capacity per institution of around 650 Mbits/s.

Another way of predicting the required band-

widths is to look at the load for existing “leading edge” services and estimate increases in load over the next five years. Current loads are known and measurable. The predicted take up of such services however is obviously much more arbi- trary, but informed predictions can be made. From an analysis it is possible to envisage LAN bandwidths in excess of 500 Mbits/s and hence a backbone requirement of 500-700 Mbits/s does not appear unreasonable.

The conclusion reached from this was to pro- vide a G-MING backbone which, within 5 years from inception, would be capable of supporting at least 500 Mbits/s and capable, when neces- sary, of further upgrades.

3. Infrastructure suppliers

Because of the metropolitan nature of this project, a large number of potential suppliers could be identified to provide some or all of the required telecommunication infrastructure. These potential suppliers included British Gas, British Rail, British Waterways, BT, Fibreway, Mercury Communications, Metrolink, North West Water, Norweb Communications and Nynex Ca- blecomms. In addition alliances were sought from local city/borough councils and local develop- ment corporations.

As far as possible constraints were not placed on the technology expected from suppliers. A range of options were discussed with each inter- ested supplier from the provision of ducts through which G-MING could provide its own fibre optic infrastructure up to the provision of a “standard” telecommunications link. The main criteria which had to be met was that the proposed provision would be an order of costs cheaper than the current PTT pricing structure. At the same time the need for a reliable and serviceable infrastruc- ture was essential in any solution adopted.

One thing was quickly clear, that no one sup- plier could possibly be cost effective in providing every link. There were links where self provision was almost certain to be the most cost effective solution, even bearing in mind the need for ongo- ing support for such links.

P. Mills, J. Strom /Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28 (1996) 589-597 593

Some organisations were clearly not interested in participating in the project, others indicated that they would only be interested in providing “standard” PIT services at lo-1.5% discount.

This led to a short list of suppliers who could supply significant parts of the required infrastruc- ture, namely Norweb Communications, Nynex Cablecomms and Fibreway. There were also a small number of organisations who could provide services in small geographical areas which would be useful as an alternative provision for specific sites.

3.1. Norweb Communications

provision of fibre optic cable nationally, mainly to telecommunications suppliers. As such they only provide a managed fibre service and not a physi- cal layer such as PDH or SDH. The main reason for their ability to deliver fibre nationally and to a metropolitan area is an agreement with British Waterways for access to public towpaths along- side canals. The fibre is installed beneath the towpath, not in the canal itself. Fibreway recog- nise that delivering fibre optic cable only to build- ings located alongside a canal is insufficient and hence are providing infrastructure as and when required by businesses away from the canals themselves.

Norweb Communications have recently en- tered the market as a telecommunications opera- tor and their main strategy is aimed at the small to large business community. The geographical provision of Ielectricity services means that their telecommunications coverage will be much greater than Greater Manchester, although mostly in the north west of England. Since they are a new telecommunications operator the provision they propose is with the latest equipment and they emphasise the provision of a managed SDH service.

3.4. Collaboration with local authorities

3.2. Nynex Cablecomms

Nynex have the cable TV franchise for the Greater Manchester area as well as franchises to the north of Manchester. Nynex is the New York and New England telecommunications operator who have entered the cable TV market in the UK. As with Norweb Communications they are a licensed telecommunications operator. They have committed to pass every home in their cable TV franchise areas in the North West by 1998. This includes the provision of fibre optic cable within reach of an area containing 150 homes. Nynex would also offer G-MING a managed service based on SDH but with the added bonus of enhanced video distribution services.

The city and borough councils, particularly Manchester City Council and Salford City Coun- cil, were keen to add support to the G-MING vision. Manchester City Council is very active in the development of telematics facilities to sup- port economic regeneration and is currently the lead city in the EC “Telecities” programme. A number of related telematics developments are being proposed in particular a plan to link local technoparks into a virtual science park. The G- MING network would be used as an infrastruc- ture for this development and would foster links between the academic and business/industry communities.

4. G-MING infrastructure

G-MING would be evolutionary in nature. Over a period of time the network would be expanded to remote sites according to a schedule and in a form appropriate to each institution.

4.1. Sites

3.3. Fibreway

Fig. 1 represents a logical diagram of the pro- posed G-MING network. A core network would be provided containing the main campuses of the six G-MING institutions. In addition a number of strategic sites have been selected on the following basis:

Fibreway are a subsidiary of GPT and have + Importance of the site to the owning institu- only recently been formed. Their business is the tion.

594 P. Mills, .I. Strom / Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28 (1996) 589-597

- Ability of the site to support a number of other buildings in the geographical locality (within 1 km). The other remote (satellite) sites would then

be connected into this infrastructure of core and strategic sites.

In addition to sites within the Greater Manch- ester area three other sites were identified as important: Jodrell Bank, Crewe and Alsager. Al- though these sites are located some 25km south of Manchester their connection into G-MING was included in negotiations with suppliers; how- ever the only cost effective option was the use of microwave links.

The proposed implementation strategy for G- MING is that the core and strategic sites would be connected initially at loo-155 Mbits/s and the core network upgraded within 2 years to 622 Mbits/s. Institutions would be able to choose whether a data only service was sufficient at a site, or optionally upgrade to ATM. Sites other

than the core sites could also be upgraded to higher bandwidths as required.

4.2. Co-ordination

One institution would act as a lead site to coordinate the infrastructure implementation. Each institution would have to assign wayleave rights, whilst the G-MING organisation exists (not just whilst they are members), to give access to that property used by G-MING. Each institution would also need to agree a contract with the “lead” site committing the appropriate funds for the project. G-MING would provide coordination facilities and institutions would continue to pro- vide the necessary expertise to provide their own network and voice systems. A G-MING Steering Committee with representatives from each partic- ipating institution would oversee the whole pro- ject.

CENTRAL AREA

Fig. 1. Logical structure.

P. Milt& J. Strom /Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28 (1996) 589-597 595

4.3. Technology

ATM would be the preferred technology for the following reasons: * The technology allows both data and constant

bandwidth services. e The technology allows a wide range of band-

widths (up to 2.488 Gbits/s) and there are strong possibilities that even higher band- widths will be standardised. This gives consid- erable future proofing.

* There is a strong grouping of suppliers and users who are pushing the standard forward rapidly under the banner of the ATM Forum. It is accepted that ATM would not overnight

become the network technology for connecting end systems such as PCs. With Ethernet inter- faces for PCs at $75 per card it is clear that

Ethemets on campus and at remote buildings would be the standard interface for a number of years. Hence, sites would need the ability to connect existing data networks and new equip- ment providing ATM interfaces.

There would almost certainly, on cost grounds, be a need to use a mix of solutions from the following technologies: * ATM equipment. * FDDI equipment. + Ethernet equipment. * Bridge/routers over point-to-point links.

The ATM scheme proposed would initially only require basic functionality to provide the required services, so “buying in” early should not have a detrimental effect. Fig. 2 shows how ATM would be used initially to provide a data network and then as institutions required additional types

AYtotm BAldb-Q Tmfford Park

G-MING Infrastructure using Fibre or PDH - providing an ATM (data, voice and video> network

Fig. 2. ATM structure.

596 P. Milk, .I. Srrotn / Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28 (1996) 589-597

of application they would be able to install equip- ment to give full ATM services.

The recommended solution, put simply, would be to provide routers at each core site with an ATM interface and an FDDI interface. At other sites it is expected that there would be a router with an ATM interface and multiple Ethernet connections. Initially there would be one central ATM switch linking the sites together and allow- ing connectivity to SuperJANET.

As more sites were connected additional ATM switches would be purchased and located at ap- propriate core or strategic sites. At a time appro- priate to the institution an ATM switch would be placed at core, strategic or satellite sites. The existing router would give access to the “legacy” data LAN’s (Ethernet, FDDI) and the ATM switch would allow either end systems to be di- rectly connected or campus ATM switches to be connected.

This approach would therefore be evolution- ary, delaying expenditure until it is really re- quired, whilst maximising the possibilities of us- ing the latest technology where appropriate.

4.4. Cost sharing proposals

The core network costs plus the ongoing staffing costs would be shared out as follows: - 50% in proportion to the research and teach-

ing funding of each institution. - 50% in proportion to the number of remote

sites connected. Any future upgrades, would also be shared out

in this manner. Costs of strategic and satellite sites would be

funded by the relevant institutions.

4.5. Non-consortium access

Once the G-MING network was in place other institutions (e.g. hospitals, colleges) would be al- lowed to join either by accepting a percentage of ongoing recurrent core costs and becoming full members of G-MING (being able to influence the development of G-MING) or by a fixed capital and recurrent cost as decided appropriately from time to time by the G-MING members.

5. Conclusions

The G-MING study has demonstrated the eco- nomic viability and technical feasibility of provid- ing a cost effective telecommunications infras- tructure for the education community.

There are strong elements of support for G- MING both from the academic community and from the local city and borough councils. A devel- opment on this scale would therefore be clearly of strategic importance to both communities.

It is also clear that the G-MING infrastructure provides the basis to develop and demonstrate many new services and applications which could attract future European infrastructure or re- search funding.

The applications supported by the infrastruc- ture wouId obviously grow with time, however some essential applications would be available at once, such as library services (e.g. remote docu- ment delivery and CD-ROM access> as well as high bandwidth access to SuperJANET for all institutions. The latter would be particularly im- portant within the context of developing informa- tion sources with mixtures of rich media types (text, graphics, sound and video).

The G-MING infrastructure would also have decisive effects on how the institutions develop their business. Obvious changes would be in how teaching and learning opportunities could be pro- vided to students using technology, but the insti- tutions would also be able to coordinate a range of current activities (e.g. Libraries) that require telecommunications infrastructure which would both create opportunities and provide expendi- ture savings.

Peter Mills has worked in the IT in- dustry since 1975 in various capacities (User Support, Computer Operations Manager, Systems Manager, Head of Network Unit). He has specialised in network provision since 1985 and is now Head of the Network Unit at the Manchester Computing Centre, UK. This involves the provision of network access to National Supercomputing and Dataset services from the UK academic and research community

and the provision of network services to the University of Manchester and UMIST community.

P. Mills, J. Strom /Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 28 (1996) 589-597

Jim Strom is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing at the Manrlrortnr LTmt-opolitan University,

courses on commu- LllUur‘lrYLI. 1.1111

UK. He conducts nication networks and distributed sys- tems. Since 1993 he has been working as the Director of the Telematics Re- search and Applications Centre (TRAC) with a focus on EDI for SMEs and distributed multimedia over ISDN. He is also currently in- volved in a TEMPUS project to pro-

vide networking resources and to develop curricula for the teaching of Computer Networks in Lithuania.

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