Activating AIDA

In the second of a series of three features, Network News continuesits on-site study of Mercury's internet solution, AIDA. This week, the insand outs of project implementation.

The story so far, Mercury Communications is under pressure to get its Internet service up and running quickly to compete in the already crowded residential market.

The Online Services Unit is setting up its own dialup residential Internet service, called AIDA, designed to complement Coronet - its corporate offering.

Last week, Network News looked at the tendering of the project and prototyping workshops, which took place in record time. The tendering phase was completed at the end of June.

Sun Microsystems reseller Micromuse had been selected to supply kit and consultancy for the back-end server infrastructure, while Chernikeef was to supply Cisco routers for the network infrastructure itself.

The Web server software was to be supplied by Netscape, while the call centre support for the system was to be provided by Harrow-based technical support outsourcing company, SupportLink.

Continuing to work to tight deadlines, the practical design and implementation of the AIDA network started in July.

Home Business Services (HBS) is the part of Mercury buying AIDA from the Online Services Unit and Adrian Chamberlain, HBS managing director, was keen to see a live demonstration by September.

The network was scheduled to be launched on 5 November, allowing time for the marketing and sales teams to create enough interest in the service.

PROJECT TASKFORCE

At the start of July, Mercury's product development manager, Nick Evans, divided the project into separate workstreams, each reporting to him.

The project comprised:

- a team covering provisioning (literature distribution and sales);

- the product team which would position the product within Mercury Communications itself;

- online operations, which would run the Internet access network when it was installed;

- network development, which was tasked with handling the routing of the calls over the Mercury telephone network until they reached the AIDA system based in Brentford.

Also involved were the commercial (marketing) team, and the design and build team. The design and build team consisted of representatives from Micromuse and Chernikeef and staff from suppliers Sun and Cisco on call.

David Herring, Internet architect at Micromuse, explains that the relationship between Micromuse and Mercury was vital to meeting deadlines because it cut out the bureaucracy often associated with co-operative projects.

"I think that understanding both the leadership qualities of Mercury and the way in which it wanted to work from the beginning was vital because AIDA was a short project," he explains.

"You're talking three months from architectural design through to training. In terms of synergy, it was such a short project that no-one had time to blink."

INSTANT INTERNET SERVICE

Mercury's Evans explains that the design of the network had to achieve the same level of availability as users would get from Mercury's voice-based telephone service. This meant operating 24 hours-a-day, 365 days-a-year.

He likens this to the way that customers always get a dial tone whenever they pick up a telephone on the Mercury network.

The Internet service had to be equally reliable. This means having enough capacity to exceed any demand the AIDA infrastructure may receive.

Luckily, the project had support from both Chamberlain and chief executive Peter Howell-Davies, and therefore the u1m in finances were secured.

Evans made sure that he had more than enough capacity at the front of the AIDA infrastructure, which was all located in the same room. Calls to the 0645 number, which gives residential customers access to the AIDA network, are sent to seven Cisco 5200 access routers provided by Chernikeef.

There are two E1 lines running to each 5200, and these lines provide 64Kbps each - enough for 30 telephone calls each or 60 calls a router. The calls are fed through the 5200 routers across a standard 10BaseT connection into a Cisco Catalyst 2800 switch.

This switch in turn connects onto a Fast Ethernet network, on which sit four 167MHz dual-processor Sun UltraSparc enterprise servers. These are supported by four Sparc storage arrays, each with six 2.1GB disks.

The Sun servers, which are designed in a cross-failover mechanism so that if one fails, the others can pick up its processes, run the Web functions including Domain Name Services and the News Server.

One of the servers handles administration and another runs the Hewlett-Packard OpenView network management service which helps the operations team monitor what is happening on the rest of the Brentford network.

The Fast Ethernet network also connects into a Cisco 4700 router, which acts as the link between the Fast Ethernet network and an FDDI ring. Also connecting into this ring is the Coronet corporate network.

The FDDI ring then connects out using another Cisco 4700 router alongside a 7513 router, both of which function as the Global Network Access Point (GNAP) to the Cable & Wireless Internet eXchange (CWIX) network. This provides the Mercury core Internet network with 100Mbps access to the Internet.

To provide more efficient access to the UK Internet, the Cisco 7513 router also connects through a Fast Ethernet link to the London Internet Neutral eXchange (LINX) in the Docklands, which acts as the central point for much of the UK's Internet traffic.

The only weak point of the AIDA infrastructure appears to be the single 10BaseT connection designed to hook the 14 E-1 lines up to the Catalyst 2800 switch. This is more than adequate, however, says Evans.

"All the Cisco 5200 units connect to the single Catalyst 2800, but you will never get more than 10Mbps out of one of them," he says.

"You will never get 70Mbps out of all of them working flat out.

We overestimated heavily on the amount of usage. We talked to colleagues at Cable & Wireless to get real life examples of what they were experiencing. We then sized that throughout the whole platform."

When it came to testing the network, Evans adopted a bottom-up approach, testing individual components before linking them all together.

"We tested the system until it fell over. The system was designed to cope with 50,000 customers initially. The system had to support between 7,000 and 10,000 customers," Evans says.

"We had taken a long view on all the architecture issues. The only thing that restricted it to 7,000 was the number of access servers we had."

By the time the system launched, everything was ready, and it went ahead as planned. Evans takes pride in confirming that the system has not been down for a single minute since it was launched in November.

What many users forget is that the implementation of a project is not the last phase. For a system to really succeed, careful planning of the maintenance process and the preservation of supplier/customer relationships is vital.

Next week's article, which looks at the final part of the AIDA project, shows how Mercury and Micromuse demonstrated this by maintaining the current system and initiating a major upgrade in the form of AIDA 2.

AIDA

Project Aims: Achieve rapid entry into the Internet dialup market.

Provide Mercury customers with a unique and cost effective Internet access service, supporting Mercury's position as a provider of differentiated services.

Timescale: May-November 1996.

Project Value: #1m.

Solution: Dedicated Internet platform connected to Mercury's Intelligent Network allowing National Local Call access (using an 0645 number). Customer registration is achieved through an online Web interface. Access speeds of up to 33.6Kbps (V.34+) are supported.

Platform consists of a series of Cisco 5211 access servers and Cisco 4700 and 7513 core routers. Sun servers provide email (POP 3), Web Proxy, News, an online registration facility and Radius authentication. Internet connectivity is provided by direct access to the Cable & Wireless Internet eXchange (CWIX) and the London Internet Neutral Exchange (LINX).

Customers are provided with client software based on Netscape Navigator 2.02.

A 24-hour helpdesk facility is provided.

Hardware: Cisco 5211 Access Servers, Sun UItraSparc Enterprise Servers, Sun Mirrored SparcStorage Arrays, Cisco Catalyst 2600 Switch, Cisco 470CM distribution routers, Cisco 7513 backbone router, FDDI backbone, 10/100BaseT Fast Ethernet connections.

Network Management: Cisco Works, Hewlett-Packard OpenView.

System Management: OpenVision Eventmanager and Securemax.

OS Software: Solaris, Cisco IOS.

Cabling: 100BaseT, 10BaseT Ethernet and FDDI.

Wan Links: CWIX and LINX.

Internet applications: Netscape supplied the proxy server used for security, the Web server and the News server which allows customers to access the Usenet Newsgroup network.