EaStMAN: An Overview

Introduction

There is considerable interest in both public and private sectors in the construction of MANs in order to integrate networking provision, achieve high speed connectivity both locally and to external networks (such as the Internet) and to make cost savings over self provision. Indeed, early access to and acquisition of the networking infrastructure supporting high bandwidth is perceived as a pre-requisite for the exploitation of multi-media and multi-service applications which are now appearing in the marketplace.

The following paragraphs provide some informative detail on the initiative by the four Universities: Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, Napier, Stirling and the three Higher Education Institutions: Edinburgh College of Art, Moray House Institute of Education and Queen Margaret College to create EaStMAN, the Edinburgh and Stirling Metropolitan Area Network. At the time of writing, we are implementing Phase II of the project.

EaStMAN Project Objectives

The general focus of the EaStMAN project has been summarised as:

The aim of EaStMAN in the medium timescale is to provide a pervasive Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network throughout the Region which can encompass educational, hospital academic departments, public and private sector partners.
The network must be able to support new generation applications, for example, video conferencing, video on demand and multi-media for teaching, self directed learning and research as well as supporting the normal data and voice requirements of the MAN partners.

These aims are far-reaching and will take some time to achieve in total.

It will be possible to use the technology to, for example, break down the barriers posed by geography and provide convenient and high quality access to networked facilities. Applications and services would present an user appearance which is independent of location when the MAN can provide the bandwidth and therefore seamless interaction.

We also view EaStMAN as a means to implement and explore further the `added value' which might be brought by `Superhighways' in both capability and their possible penetration into the community. The consultation paper, Superhighways for Education [3], discusses possible applications of the power available through broadband networks and their potential to enhance and develop education, while the JISC Issues paper [1] notes:

.....The HEIs [Higher Education Institutions] of the future will seek a foundation in challenging learning and research programmes and will be closely integrated into the local and regional community and often with an international dimension. .....

Although EaStMAN makes use of several technologies, there is a strong focus on ATM as the core technology: we wish to ensure future support of multi-service network applications. From reference [1]:

..... Higher bandwidth and the flexibility of the multi- media ATM protocol ensures that there will be an advanced underlying networking capability for the community to exploit over the next ten years. .....

EaStMAN Project Status and Funding

As a result of the 1994 and 1995 initiatives by the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC), the seven Higher Education funded insitutions in the Edinburgh and Stirling regions have succeeded in constructing a high speed state-of-the-art network linking campuses belonging to the collaborating institutions. Phase II of the project is underway and the fibre infrastructure has been delivered by ScottishTelecom.

The EaStMAN network is constructed from two sources: open single-mode fibre and a managed 155Mbps SDH service from King's Buildings to the University of Stirling, both leased from ScottishTelecom. These are schematically shown in the diagram.

The general EaStMAN topology is two rings with fibre spurs from some sites:

Phase I, which connects eleven sites, was funded by the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC), the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) while the collaborating institutions themselves matched SHEFC's contribution with 25% from their own funds. The JISC contribution recognised that EaStMAN was a very cost-effective way to to roll out SuperJANET services to the Institutionsity of Edinburgh who had no direct connection.
Phase II, which attaches a further five sites to EaStMAN was funded under SHEFC's Use of MANs Initiative (UMI) also with a 25% contribution from the collaborating institutions.

The technologies deployed to connect the various sites are shown in the second diagram where the two high speed network infrastructures, ATM and FDDI, are displayed.

At this time, there are various MAN awareness programmes running to stimulate the user community into consideration and deployment of new and familiar applications which can be supported on the FDDI and ATM high-speed network.

An exciting new development is the SHEFC initiative to create the `Scottish Cross-Connect', which is due to be installed by July 1996. This links all four Scottish MAN networks via 155Mbps SDH (and probably to the SuperJANET ATM network). In addition, SHEFC will fund 75% of the costs associated with provision of video conferencing studio and equipment. The video is anticipated to run directly over ATM, in contrast to the more conventional H.320 equipment over ISDN or G.703 circuits.

Thus, on a very short time scale, considerable integration of Scottish HEI services over ATM will be possible - the potential effect on user applications and services is far-reaching.

Discussion of Some Specific Requirements

As can be seen from the preceding discussion, application development to make use of the EaStMAN infrastructre will be on a broad front. To make this more concrete we present here some discussion of general areas of development which are deemed important to the project. (This is in addition to the UMI sponsored collection of the various application types which are being developed for MANs across Scotland.)

Access to or connection to SuperJANET is an important service in the UK Academic Community.
Connection to SuperJANET through high speed interfaces will allow access to and delivery of new services, e.g. electronic publishing, voice, and video, throughout the highly connected UK Academic Community. All City HEIs will be enabled to participate in the rollout of community wide services and initiatives.
Before the advent of EaStMAN, only Edinburgh (ATM and 10Mbps SMDS), Heriot-Watt and Stirling (both 10 Mbps SMDS) had such access. Today, through EaStMAN, SuperJANET access is achieved by Napier University, Edinburgh College of Art, Moray House and QMC. The EaStMAN common managed point of service for SuperJANET, a cisco 7000 router, is located on the EaStMAN's 100Mbps FDDI ring at the University of Edinburgh's King's Buildings campus.
The integration of sites by high speed networking is important, one aspect being the provision of services in a location independent manner.
The institutions within Edinburgh have several major campuses and smaller sites distributed throughout the City. Thus, we sought significant improvements in intra institution connection between the sites. For example, in Phase I, two of Napier University's main campuses are now linked by FDDI at 100Mbps while in Phase II, Napier's two remaining major campuses will be attached, as well as bringing in the second campus of College of Art, Moray House and Queen Margaret College. The University of Edinburgh will also bring the Western General Hospital into the high speed network. The inter campus links will be 155Mbps ATM for Napier and Edinburgh, 100Mbps FDDI for Moray House and the College of Art. Through the high speed linkages, users will be connected to central facilities such as the Library, MIS, CD-ROM servers, multi-media, video-conferencing etc.
Note that the SuperJANET service is mainly IP, EaStMAN also supports Novell's IPX and AppleTalk between various sites belonging to an institution.
For future integration, the EaStMAN institutions still have many small sites and buildings whose networking provision will need consideration, examples are student flats, halls of residence and so on.
In addition, there is also a strong requirement for high bandwidth to be available between Universities and geographically remote but important sites. For example, Heriot-Watt has plans to merge with the Scottish College of Textiles thus bringing increased importance to the need for as seamless a link as possible between those two particular campuses (Riccarton and Galashiels). Indeed Heriot-Watt also wish also to improve communication with an institute in Orkney. The remote sites pose particular difficulties due to their geography in relation to the Riccarton campus and the demand for cost effective provision of high bandwith.
It may be the case that such small and remote sites might be served by networking technologies more appropriate to their size, location and user requirements, rather than by broad deployment of what may in certain cases turn out to be prohibitively expensive technology. A particular example of alternatives is the piloting of the use of CATV networks to deliver ethernet connectivity between schools and the University of Edinburgh.
....The need to prove technology and engender the necessary culture change to improve electronic information delivery and the development of the virtual library. .....[1]
Advances in technology will impact on library services. A particularly significant development is that of library sharing: one of the applications which will be important (as a result of the Follett Report [2]) is the possibility of sharing library material across the whole academic community. EaStMAN will be an important vehicle for this within the region. Application pilots are likely to bear fruit in the 2 to 3 year timescale.
Access to National Academic Community resources can be improved by network infrastructure enhancements.
As an example, in the case of Super Computing, EPCC at the University Edinburgh hosts a CRAY T3D/MCN512-8, CRAY J916/10-1024, Thinking Machines Corp. CM-200 Connection Machine, as well as various Meiko computing surfaces. The access to these resources could be dramatically altered through high speed networking: the possibility for remote visualisation / design and so on can be immediately and favourably influenced by EaStMAN's high bandwidth.
Links to Further Education colleges and schools are seen as important in the short term, both in pursuit of our aim to increase access and develop schools liaison, and to establish and expand distance learning interests.
Some schools in the Lothian Region have participated in the LEARN project which allowed IP access over X.25 to Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt and Queen Margaret College services. This pilot study is currently coming to a close but other links are sought with schools and further education establishments. Technical solutions for the connection of these to EaStMAN can make use of many technologies and their support will be a challenge. It is likely that the access from schools may initially be intermittent but may increase. Eventually such access should be able to support multimedia and video access (we have already mentioned the collaboration on the use of CATV networks to deliver ethernet connectivity between schools and the University of Edinburgh).
Support for new generation applications and doing the current ones better.
EaStMAN partners place great emphasis on the extensive use of technology in teaching and learning, and in the associated management and administration. Areas of particular interest include multi-media, computer-based learning environments and distance learning. The support of these areas requires access to the highest affordable bandwith and ATM (and is successors) is/are seen as the medium to long term bandwith development strategy.
All HEIs are aware of the changing nature of user applications towards support of multimedia capability, sharing of data structures, conferencing and so on. Of particular importance to the Universities is the potential for interactive distance learning through video in conjunction with image databases as well as the enhancement of research tools using the same types of applications. This change is accelerating. Naturally, such applications can require large amounts of bandwidth, if not to support a single application then to support the sheer numbers of its users. Indeed, the first network applications on SuperJANET all concern multimedia or visualisation experiments e.g., surgery teaching, supercomputer data visualisation and interaction, special datasets (rare document access), electronic journal testbed, remote consultation (pathology), remote sensing data (browsing earth image files), group communication (Pandora at Cambridge - networked advanced desktop) and so on.
We will also prepare for and stimulate multi-media applications such as computer-based teaching/learning and video-conferencing. Innovative teaching and learning systems are likely to be of increasing significance (see for example, reference [1]).
All the above stresses new applications, however the MAN should be able to support the current applications too, and perhaps improve their response or throughput, for example, specialised WWW servers, mirrors and caches, audio archives and so on.
Medical Applications
The University of Edinburgh is perhaps unique at this time within the EaStMAN partners in that there is considerable teaching and research performed within academic departments in the three city hospitals: the Western General Hospital (WGH), Royal Edinburgh Hospital (REH) and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) - although in the first instance only WGH and RIE will be able to connect to the high speed EaStMAN ATM network. In particular, as part of the University's response to the Acute Service Strategy, the academic activity at the WGH site will continue to grow over the next few years.
Extending the inter-campus connectivity to very high speeds will present the opportunity to incorporate the new technology into medical teaching, collaboration, information dissemination and so on, as well as considerably improving and stimulating the interactions between these sites and the Medical Faculty at Teviot Row. Specialities and unique expertise which exist within the various hospital sites could be `exported' to other sites for teaching and research purposes. For example, there has been a joint Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow proposal concerning a Rheumatic Diseases Teaching Project. Indeed, medical applications pose a considerable challenge for networking technology which can be met by the EaStMAN ATM infrastructure and there is interest in high quality video applications in, for example, the transmission of cardiac doppler ultrasound images between RIE and WGH.
Integrating services such as security and closed-circuit monitoring is perceived as an important attribute of the video capability of the ATM MAN.
The potential for including telephone voice traffic (within the confines of current and future licensing regulations) will be monitored.
All of the HEIs concerned have PABXs which are generally linked with each other by megastream links. When economically sound, and cost savings are significant, the unification of data and telephony requirements could be achieved through EaStMAN capability.

References

[1] Joint Information Systems Committee, Exploiting Information Systems in Higher Education, April 1995.
[2] ``Report of the Joint Funding Councils' Libraries Review Group: Report'' (Follett Report), December 1993.
[3] Superhighways in Education, Consultation Paper on Broadband Communications, DFE, HMSO, 1995.

Acknowledgements

This document is a digest of several (unpublished) notes and discussion documents created by the original EaStMAN project team: Angus Annan (Stirling), Scott Currie and George Howat (Edinburgh), Paul Dean (Napier), Julia Hill (Heriot-Watt), Tom Mortimer (Queen Margaret College).(A full contact list is available). However, any errors or omissions should be attributed to this editor (GH). This document does not necessarily describe or constrain policy for any party connected with the MAN.

For more information, please contact

Tel : +44 (0)131 650 4950
Fax : +44 (0)131 650 6552
Email: G.Howat@ed.ac.uk

Document last altered: 28th May 1996.