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The Dome: disaster or debutante

Les Peterson AnchorDesk

Published: 04 Jan 2000 17:09 GMT

How about a customer who wants a big, fast, show-case network, carrying data, voice and video? "Sounds good so far", you may be thinking. But here's the rub: The precise details of what the network's actually going to carry will only be worked out while you're actually installing the thing, so you'll need to make design changes as you go.

Too easy? The site it's going into is an immense building site on top of toxic waste ground, you've got less than six months to get everything designed, tested, installed and working, and the deadline is non-negotiable. Oh, and if it doesn't work, everyone will know about it because the world is watching.

The customer is the New Millennium Experience Corporation (NMEC). The location is the Millennium Dome and its surrounding buildings, and the deadline is almost upon us . The systems integrator who said "Yup, we can do that" rather than giving a two-word answer ending in "off" was Workplace Technologies, now part of NTL.

And they've done it. Make no mistakes - this is one serious network. 622Mbps ATM core, 155Mbps ATM and 10/100 Ethernet at the edges, Voice over IP for telephony, video support - you name the buzzword, it's there. It's all built around 3Com switches - a ring of six CoreBuilder 9000s as the backbone leading out to CoreBuilder 7000 and 3500 switches at the edges. There are already several thousand devices on the network, and this is likely to increase.

All the ticket gates have got connections both for the PCs reading the tickets and also for Ethernet-connected telephones running Voice over IP. Sound and lighting data also runs across the network, meaning that one of the switches had to be installed in the gantry suspended from cables 40m above the main floor. Funnily enough, this narrow, swaying gantry isn't the most popular place for network maintenance work.

Indeed, for the people running this network, it hasn't exactly been a walk in the park.

Read on. . .