take me back to tulsa...
"City of Tulsa Launches High-Speed
Metropolitan Area Network Via Advanced
3Com E-Network Systems
Business Wire - February 16, 2000 13:16
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 16, 2000--
Fast Growing City Delivers Innovative Voice,
Video and Data Services Using Powerful 3Com Systems
3Com Corporation (Nasdaq:COMS) announced today that the City of Tulsa,
Oklahoma, has standardized its new city-wide metropolitan area network (MAN) on
3Com's e-Network technologies to keep pace with the city's burgeoning growth.
The enterprise e-Network, which provides application support, access and
availability, seamlessly links 23 departments and agencies in 130 buildings and is
speeding network services to 4,000 employees, the public and area businesses.
Once known as the "Oil Capital of the World," Tulsa is now one of the fastest
growing cities in the U.S., and has a diversified economy with an influx of new
businesses from a broad spectrum of industries. To meet the needs of this growing
community and its 400,000 residents, the 101-year-old metropolis is improving
public services by extending advanced network applications to municipal buildings
across the city's 600 square miles.
Fueled by 3Com's e-Network technology, Tulsa is now using the network's voice,
video and data capabilities to enhance government efficiency, increase public
safety and provide more effective service to citizens and businesses. The city's
police department relies on customized, network-driven imaging software for
department-wide access to and sharing of fingerprints, mug shots and criminal
records data. Tulsa's fire department uses the network's multimedia capabilities to
deliver jitter-free training videos of the latest fire-fighting procedures to the city's 30
fire stations.
The e-Network also ensures residents of reliable and timely billing from Tulsa's
water and sewage departments, which utilize a comprehensive information system
from Custima to track usage and generate invoices. The network-driven Hanson
data management system further allows Tulsa to efficiently monitor permits and
licenses. Additionally, all departments depend on an enterprise-wide finance and
personnel package from Computer Associates, which streamlines financial
processes and speeds city procurements.
The network also provides a sophisticated, Web-based card catalog application
suite from Innovative Interfaces that runs as a virtual local area network (VLAN) over
the ATM MAN. From the comfort of their own homes, users can access any of
Tulsa County's libraries to search for and reserve books, as well as retrieve
information from data and knowledge-bases like the Encyclopedia Britannica. The
city also has a network-driven emergency 911 backup system in case of
unexpected interruption of phone service.
"It was imperative for us to have a network that could grow with the city and still
deliver the most advanced services available," said Tulsa's network manager Roger
Hall. "Using 3Com systems, we now have a cost-effective infrastructure that will
fully support these mission-critical objectives well into the coming century."
Better Networking for Better Government
Tulsa's new MAN emerged from the city's need to provide advanced network
services to an influx of new businesses and a booming population. Previously,
Tulsa relied on its legacy data network built in 1990. Originally designed with six
PCs linked to a mainframe, Tulsa's network evolved to an FDDI ring that relied on
wide-area connectivity over costly T1 lines or slow dial-up access to reach the
city's outlying facilities. Over time, however, this network, which utilized older
generation 3Com systems, became saturated with demands from an increasing
number of users and applications.
"Our network simply couldn't keep up with the city's need to modernize services,
particularly those vital to public safety," said Hall. "We needed a solution that
would give us latency-free performance to any facility in the city, even for
bandwidth-hungry imaging and video applications. We also wanted to avoid the
ongoing costs of T1 leases."
Tulsa seized the opportunity to rectify this situation when TCI Cable sought
permission to lay fiber-optic cable throughout the metropolitan area. The city
agreed to accommodate TCI in exchange for the cable company's commitment to
install additional cabling for a new communications infrastructure. Once the
fiber-optic cable linked all city buildings, Tulsa built its sophisticated MAN using
3Com's Ethernet/ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) technologies.
"We wanted ATM for its proven ability to converge voice, video and data," Hall
explained. "Having used 3Com systems, we knew they offered industry-leading
technologies that were fast, reliable and low-maintenance. Their new generation of
products confirmed everything we believed about the quality of 3Com systems."
Deployed over the last three years, Tulsa's new MAN utilizes 16 3Com
CoreBuilder(R) 7000 ATM switches installed throughout the city to provide a 155
Mbps OC-3 ATM MAN backbone. Two of these switches are 17-slot platforms in
the data center at the police/courts building that are linked by redundant OC-3
links. One of these two switches connects to five CoreBuilder 7000 ATM switches
that form an ATM ring in the northern part of the city. The other provides
connectivity for the CoreBuilder 7000 switches that comprise an ATM ring in the
city's southern half.
The CoreBuilder 7000 ATM switches provide OC-3 links to a SuperStack(R) II
Switch 2700 ATM/Ethernet switch in each of the city's 130 buildings. The
SuperStack II 2700 switches distribute 10 Mbps connections to some 2,000
desktops within these facilities. The city also is installing a SuperStack II Switch
3300 switch at 13 Tulsa County libraries that link via OC-3 to a backbone
CoreBuilder 7000 switch. Moreover, Tulsa links 10 CoreBuilder 5000 switches to
the ATM backbone at OC-3 speed for connectivity in high-usage buildings. The
CoreBuilder 5000 switches deliver 100 Mbps links to the SuperStack II DualSpeed
Hub 500 hubs. These hubs provide shared 100 Mbps and 10 Mbps links to
workstations and desktops and, to further maximize performance for users, Tulsa
relies on 3Com's EtherLink(R) II network interface cards (NICs) and uses 3Com
NICs in the Dell desktops it acquires.
To ensure users of speedy access to their applications, each department connects
its servers to the network at switched 10 Mbps and shared 100 Mbps speeds. For
servers that retain their legacy FDDI connections, the city links them to the MAN
via NETBuilder II(R) routers. It also uses NETBuilder II EZBuilt systems for Internet
connectivity and to link the network to the public safety department's 911 service.
Managing an e-Network as dispersed as Tulsa's has been made simple and
efficient through the city's use of 3Com's Transcend(R) Network Control Services
for UNIX networking management application. The application allows administrators
to monitor every network device to the port level from a single central management
console, eliminating the costs of sending IS personnel to sites scattered
throughout the 600-mile city. "Thanks to Transcend software, we usually know if
there's a problem before our users do," Hall stated. For additional protection, Tulsa
uses 3Com's Express service, which provides hardware replacements, telephone
support and software upgrades.
"3Com has made a key contribution to the vitalization of Tulsa," Hall concluded.
"The 3Com network enhances the reliability of public services and improves the
quality of life here. Both visitors and residents will benefit greatly from what we're
doing, and our city has come out a very big winner." |
