UCL and the new London MAN Network (LMN2)

Extract from here

The current London MAN was commissioned in 1996 and provides interconnectivity to HEIs (Higher Educational Institutions) in the London Area as well as onward access to JANET. UCL connects to the network at 155MBit/s, but this access is 'shaped' down to lower service speed in line with contractural arrangements.

An exercise to procure a replacement London MAN began last year. Publication of the OR (Operational Requirement) for the telecomunications infrastructure took place in Autumn 2000. An OR for procurement of IP routing equipment followed in early 2001. Both procurements are now contractually complete. The physical network infrastructure is to be provided by Thus plc, and the switching equipment by Logical. The new network is to be known as LMN2.

The new network provides greatly increased core switching capacity and site access speeds. It is to be based on a three site core with 2.4Gbit/s switching capacity. Core switching equipment will be based on Cisco GSR routers, sited at ULCC (the University of London Computer Centre), Imperial College, and Kings College. The core in turn will have a 2.4Gbit/s connection into the recently deployed SJ4 (SuperJANET 4) network. LMN2 client sites will be connected at 100Mbit/s to the nearest core site. The exception to this general rule is UCL, and the Bloomsbury constellation of HEIs.

Our pre-eminent role as the largest London College, and service provider to other HEIs and JANET sponsored connection sites has helped us exploit private fibre cabling arrangements between UCL and ULCC to secure a Gigabit Ethernet (1GBit/s) connection into LMN2. In addition to this primary connection, we have been granted permission to install a Fast Ethernet (100MBit/s) backup route to provide the resilience many of our customers are anxious to see. This will employ an entirely separate physical route and terminate on different equipment in a separate communications centre at UCL.

Equipment to support our connection is on site and under rigorous testing. The connection equipment will utilise the latest version of switching/routing equipment that is in use in our campus Gigabit network. We thus already have considerable experience in deploying this technology.

Users at sites connecting via UCL should see no change in their service, but should anticipate an outage, possibly of up to 0.5 day duration, as UCL connects to the new MAN. As part of the process of connection, we have been working towards re-engineering those parts of the campus network which are not strictly part of UCL or its affiliates. Where HEI sites connect directly into a core UCL switch/router, these connections will eventually be moved over to connect, directly to the UCL LMN2 router. One of the reasons for this re-design is so as to separate UCL from non-UCL network devices, so that an institutional (ie. UCL) firewall becomes a possibility as a medium-term project. Appropriate notice will be given to those (few) sites involved. The movement of these connections will incur only short (five to ten minute) outages at the sites concerned.

Wed, 23 July, 2003 13:07