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Securing Houston with optical networking: J. Dennis Piper, CIO, meets his city's public safety expectations with multiservice technology - Cover Story

Communications News, July, 2002

In a city the size of Houston, communications are vital to law enforcement. In the late 1990s, however, the Houston Police Department (HPD) was outgrowing its network, and communications were beginning to flounder.

Information services managers knew the time had come for a multiservice optical infrastructure. Only a network based on fiber optics could provide the bandwidth and reliability needed by the police department. Its greater capacity and multiservice flexibility would also extend to serve Houston city government as a whole.

"Public safety is the primary reason cities are in place," says J. Dennis Piper, chief information officer for the city. "Where safety is concerned, the public has expectations. It's our job to make sure that we can meet those expectations."

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Because of its scale, Houston provides an unusually dynamic example of the evolving metropolitan-area network (MAN). Linking the resources of service providers with those of commercial enterprises and government organizations, MANs are complex environments that combine voice, video and data communications on optical media, using IP, Ethernet and synchronous optical network (SONET) services.

For optical solutions that would enable the government to function efficiently and expand the role of e-government as planners envisioned, Houston turned to Cisco Systems Inc., San Jose, CA. The city needed an infrastructure that was capable of supporting traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM), and private-line traffic and new Ethernet services, as well. Information systems managers chose Cisco's ONS 15454 optical transport platform because it provides scalable capacity, SONET resilience, flexible multiservice support and ease of management.

"Like everybody who's looking for a solution, we wanted the most bang for the buck," says Edgar Graveline, HPD communications specialist. "Cisco gave us a lot of capabilities for a more reasonable cost."

LAW ENFORCEMENT NEEDS

The nation's second largest city in area and fourth largest in terms of population, Houston employs more than 22,000 people in 21 government departments. The largest, its police department, accounts for a third of all municipal employees. Law enforcement, along with emergency services, is the driving factor behind critical network decisions.

The city previously relied on traditional leased-line services to link its widely spread facilities. In addition, the police had a DS3 backbone used primarily to support police and fire emergency communications by forwarding wireless messages to transmission towers and dispatch centers. Other traffic included radio communications for public works and engineering, as well as five-digit dialing between the central government complex and remote sites.

Today, Houston has moved up to an OC-12 backbone using multiservice SONET transport over optical fiber. Some of the fiber is owned by the city, while the rest is leased from the local exchange carrier, Southwestern Bell. The backbone comprises a smaller ring in the downtown area and a larger ring that extends throughout the city. With more than 200 miles of fiber, the entire network was brought online this spring.

Altogether, 27 sites are connected, including public works buildings, Houston City Hall and its annex, Houston International Airport, and police headquarters, academy, communications center and command stations. A Cisco ONS 15454 optical transport platform at each site provides local access, as well as ring reliability.

Transmitting at 622 Mbps, the network brings more than 13 times the capacity of the previous infrastructure, alleviating the problems users were having with data delay. "Many services that were throttled back to T-1 bandwidth can now run full bore without problems," says Graveline.

A CITYWIDE NETWORK

Graveline and his partner, Oliver Stokes, took over network planning from now-retired Lief Erickson, who was involved in 1996 in the original specifications for the new network. The three police communications specialists worked closely with Piper and representatives of other city departments to identify user needs and to define a network that would serve the entire metropolis.

The network they created is sufficient for Houston's needs today, and the ONS 15454 platform provides scalability for future growth. The platform enables the city to expand beyond OC-12 to as far as OC-192 at 10 Gbps, and even into dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), that could provide up to 80 Gbps when network needs increase. At present, all connections are SONET-based, but the ONS 15454 gives the city the option of directly connecting 10/100-Mbps Ethernet, and even Gigabit Ethernet in an upscaled network.

Cisco and Houston also are teamed in a rollout of IP telephones over the next 12 months. With more than 25,000 IP telephones being installed in 400 facilities, the changeover is projected to save the city about $6.2 million annually, with an investment payback in one year. The new optical network will support IP phones, giving the city greater autonomy in its communications.

Technology Industry

Securing Houston with optical networking: J. Dennis Piper, CIO, meets his city's public safety expectations with multiservice technology - Cover Story

Communications News, July, 2002

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