News in a hurry

Communications News, April, 1998 by Jennifer Gangi

Packed with up-to-the minute information and delivered on time--that's what readers expect from their morning paper and that's the performance The News & Observer, a daily newspaper in Raleigh, N.C., expects from its computer network.

Faced with significant delays in throughput, limited bandwidth, and a network that did not support advanced applications, network specialists at The News & Observer (The N&O) decided to become one of the first newspapers in the country to implement asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology. They turned to ZIPCOM, a network systems integrator in Cary, N.C., for the solution.

The main goal for ZIPCOM and its business partner FORE System, an ATM hardware manufacturer, was to implement a system that could support changes in applications, bandwidth, and emerging technologies.

The N&O's network consisted of a 10 Mbps Ethernet with a distributed backbone that supported approximately 850 users. All four of the network's major segments were running at 40% or greater utilization, when 25% capacity is the most that will run on Ethernet.

ZIPCOM recommended a single solution under one management platform that would encompass redundancy, fault tolerance, and a highly available backbone strategy. ATM was elected.

"When organizations upgrade to faster machines and serves to increase performance, they often overlook the network infrastructure," says Robert Parrott, ZIPCOM's director of sales and marketing. "With the latest protocol and applications suites, the networks become overburdened. The N&O had Sun servers that ran faster than the network could handle. ATM was the perfect solution."

ATM's transmission speed is independent of the line on which it runs, making it adaptable to most wiring technologies. ATM also permits simultaneous transmission and receipt of data without interruption.

ZIPCOM came up with a five-year technology plan that will allow The N&O to grow without redesigning the network itself. "There is an easy transition into newer technologies--you just add modules for faster performance and more bandwidth when needed," says Parrott.

Danny Collins, The N&O's director of operations, says his group's investigation showed that "ATM cost the same or less than the 100Base-T Ethernet specification and had more promising benefits. Now we have the capability to progress with future applications such as videoconferencing."

The upgrade was from 10 Mbps to 155 Mbps and from the existing shared Ethernet to ATM using the ForeRunner ASX1000 backbone switch. The switch provides a high level of redundancy and is scalable to 96 ports and 10 Gbps of switching capacity. In each of the closets, a PowerHub 7000 LAN switch is connected to the backbone.

"It was easy to integrate the ATM network with the high-end computers that The N&O already had," says Doug Sept, FORE Systems' systems engineer. "Now the data can move at speeds up to 155 Mbps over OC-3 fiber optic lines from the closets to the ASX1000, and additional network nodes can be connected directly to the servers."

Engineers from ZIPCOM and FORE Systems installed the new network in an extremely high-pressure, mission-critical environment. The entire layout of the newspaper--news, ads, pictures and graphics--relies on the network, which is normally in use 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"Throughout the entire implementation, The N&O got the paper out on time every day," says Sept.

Collins says the new ATM high-performance network is "literally sleeping" because it takes very little time to pass big 40 MB files over the line.

Not only is the network fast, it's easy to manage. Network management software called ForeView enables network managers to configure, control, monitor and troubleshoot the network. The N&O's new network also benefits the publisher's other entities--the Cary News, Chapel Hill News, and Ad Pack all run through the ATM network at the main hub in Raleigh.

The value of The N&O's new network goes beyond the hardware and software. In a first for the newspaper business, ZIPCOM has made AppleTalk, a layered network operating system architecture for Macintosh computers, run over the ATM network.

HELIOS, which allows AppleTalk to run on Sun workstations, now also runs over ATM. The N&O had been trying unsuccessfully for more than two years to run the HELIOS software and AppleTalk on its old FDDI network. Integrating AppleTalk into ATM was a critical step in boosting The N&O's efficiency, since 85% of the newspaper's networking traffic comes from Macs.