Re: [Ietf-62] Re: Network Requirements and Equipment

[Dennis Fazio <[e-mail]>]

Dave Farmer and I met with the Hilton telecomm chief this afternoon to survey 
all the spaces and map out the jacks. Here is a response to Jim's recent 
message based on what we learned.


--On February 8, 2005 11:09:02 AM +0100 Jim Martin <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 	- What do we have running down from the roof to the 3th floor cloak
> closet?

Two Cat5 cables. They terminate in the Hilton's 4th floor switch room.

> 	- What do we have running up from the demarc room in the car park?

6-12 strands of multi-mode fiber. It terminates in the 3rd floor coatroom in 
a box with SC connectors.

> 	- I'm assuming the gig from Onvoy will be delivered in that demarc room in
> the car park. Do we know what type of connector they're delivering on? Last
> time we had to scramble for the cable. What gig standard are they going to
> be using? ZX-IR or LR?

The Onvoy connection will be delivered over Qwest fiber into the Hilton. We 
think the connecter is D4. I should be able to get Onvoy to supply the fiber 
jumper.  We'll have that scoped out well in advance this time. Not sure what 
gig standard they will use yet. Whatever is necessary to get it the 1 - 2 
miles to their POP. I'll follow up on that along with status with them 
tomorrow.


>> It wasn't clear from Marcia's chart that we needed access in
>> Director's Row 1-4 and the Board rooms. I don't think we included them
>> in our Access Point estimate. Will there be events in those rooms that
>> require coverage?
>
> 	I'll let Marcia answer that conclusively, but often these are offices and
> such that people would appreciate the wireless, but don't demand it.

The Board Rooms and Director's Row should easily be covered by the access 
points in the 3rd floor lobby and halls.

[...]
> 	So, that all said, I personally feel much better using the Junipers.

You certainly will feel much *stronger* after hauling them around :-)

We concur that the M10s are the way we should go.

> 	How's this for a proposed design. We place one M10 in the roof room, one
> in the car park. The roof one gets the wireless external (if that works
> out) and the car park gets the external Gig. We then place a pair of
> stacked 3750s in the 3rd floor cloak room (which I'll call the core
> switches). We run two pair from each of the M10s to the stack, terminating
> one in each physical switch, using 802.3ad link aggregation.  That way, we
> can't go down due to any one single failure. If we want to be paranoid, we
> can dual attach any fanout switches back to both core switches, and do
> 802.3ad (or cisco EtherChannel) to ensure that even the edge stays up in a
> single failure.

We were thinking we'd create two symmetrical hubs consisting of an M10 and 
ganged pair of 3750s. One hub would be in the coatroom, the other in the 
Hilton's 4th floor switch room.  The hubs would terminate the two respective 
external links and feed right into the two distribution networks.

There would be a 3750 (or ganged pair) on the roof (or Penthouse, as the 
Hilton calls it) to relay via Cat5 to the 4th floor switch room. There would 
be a similar setup in the carpark demarc, with the difference that those 
unit(s) would relay via fiber from the Qwest port up via the multi-mode to 
the coatroom.

There is a pair of Cat5 trunks between the coatroom and the 4th floor switch 
room to interconnect the two hubs for full distribution and auto-failover 
redundancy.

This seems to be a conceptually simple, symmetrical and a good 
diverse/redundant way to go AND you don't have to haul a heavy M10 up those 
steep, narrow US Navy stairs to the Penthouse (and back down). Plus, the 
routers will be more accessible if needed.

To clarify, there are two distribution networks. One originates in a panel in 
the coatroom. (The photo attached shows this with the fiber box that goes to 
the carpark above it and the two etherjacks to the 4th floor switch room 
below.) I'll call this the "Brown" network, because these all terminate in 
brown jacks in the rooms. The other net originates in the Hilton 4th floor 
switch room. I'll call this the "White" network because it feeds a set of 
white-colored jacks in all the rooms.

With the two router/switch hubs feeding the two respective distribution nets 
and interconnected with each other, you have maximum flexibility to plug 
anything you want into any number of jacks in all the rooms and work your 
VLAN magic to get it where it needs to go and keep it all sorted out.

Dave Farmer will be drawing up a physical and virtual LAN topology shortly 
and send to the list to give his ideas of how it can all be laid out.

Our survey showed that there were several White and Brown network jacks in 
all the meeting rooms and some in the hallways. I will put them on a map and 
send them out in a subsequent message so you have an idea and our wireless 
chief(s) can map out where they want the access points.

Other misc in random order:

We will have easy access to the Hilton switch room to get to the White 
network and can use their rack space if we want.

The University should be able to supply any fiber jumpers we need between the 
3750s and Junipers. The only one in question is the Qwest jumper. I'll verify 
that Onvoy can supply this since they should know what is needed on the Qwest 
end. We'll make sure the other end will go into the 3750 OK.

The Hilton will run a Cat5 cable to the 23rd floor lounge so we can put an 
access point there. It will then be in place permanently for future use.

Cisco has agreed to provide a pair of 1400 wireless bridges to the University 
for use during IETF week. They should arrive by the 15th, and if they do, we 
will install them on Friday the 18th.

Does anyone have any info on access points yet (and a couple of antennas to 
cover the streets from the roof)?

The Hilton will supply the "pipe-and-drape" pipes for the access points so we 
can secure them and get them above the crowd. We just need to let them know 
how many.


Other notes:

If anyone wants to ship anything to the Hilton in advance of your arrival and 
if you let me know when it should arrive, I can go down and verify it arrived 
safely and undamaged to give more time for corrective action.

Off topic, but useful overall:
We now have a light rail line that goes from downtown (5 blocks from the 
Hilton) to the Airport and Mall of America. It's about 30 minutes to the 
Airport, 40 minutes to Mall of America (about the same as by car/taxi) and 
costs $1.25 ($1.75 rush hour). Marcia, this may be useful to all the 
attendees flying in or wanting to head down for some shopping. Here's the 
detail if you want to put it in any pre-conference info announcements:
<http://www.metrotransit.org/rail/index.asp>


Looking forward to seeing all you folks again.
-- 
Dennis Fazio

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