Royal Bank of Scotland can access all UK areas

The Royal Bank of Scotland has upgraded its network to allow customers to access almost all the UK's cash machines.

Royal Bank of Scotland customers can use all but five of the country's 22,000 automated teller machines (ATMs), to withdraw cash without a fee, as well as viewing statements at any Link machine.

Ian Scott, senior development manager at the Royal Bank of Scotland, said: "This has been a significant development for us over the past 6 months, and we have made significant changes to the network. The changes were made to accept customer cards, and request receipts with balance statements."

Royal Bank of Scotland changed its host system by upgrading existing Connex software on an IBM box to include the Link processor interface.

The Bank also changed its ATM software running on NCR ATMs.

It has two datacentres in Edinburgh running on an SNA-based network with two 64Kbps kilostream circuits with X.25 connections. These circuits connect across to Link's datacentres in Harrogate and Leeds, the latter being the backup site.

Link has made changes by upgrading its hardware from a 4-processor K2000 Tandem system to a 6-processor K2000 Tandem system. And it upgraded its interchange standards to include full chip card functionality.

Link will also be connected to the Mint network in the future which is a joint network used by Midland Bank and NatWest Bank customers.