CWRUnet - Case History of a Campus-wide Fiber-to-the-Desktop Network


Copyright 1992 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 15, Number 2, Summer 
1992. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is 
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                   CWRUnet--CASE HISTORY OF A CAMPUS-WIDE
                       FIBER-TO-THE-DESKTOP NETWORK
                    by Raymond K. Neff and Peter J. Haigh

ABSTRACT: Case Western Reserve University is operating the first all 
fiber optic communications network on a university campus. CWRUnet 
consists of some 7,300 outlets interconnecting faculty offices, student 
residence hall rooms, classrooms, libraries, and laboratories with 
computer data, television, telephone, audio, fax, and image information 
services. This article describes the development of CWRUnet.

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Raymond K. Neff is Vice President for Information Services at Case
Western Reserve University, where he also holds academic appointments as
Adjunct Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, and of Biostatistics in
both the Schools of Medicine and Dentistry. He also serves as Director
of the University Libraries. Prior to joining CWRU, he was Assistant
Vice Chancellor-Information Systems and Technology at the University of
California at Berkeley. He holds an AB from Dartmouth College and SM and
ScD degrees from Harvard University.

Peter J. Haigh is President, Technical Services Division, at JWP Network
Services. His responsibilities include technology evaluation and
acquisition, and the design and implementation of major network
projects. Before joining JWP he served as partner in charge of
management consulting for KMG Main Hurdman, a predecessor of KPMG Peat
Marwick. He has more than twenty-five years' experience in the computer
and communications industries. He holds an MA from the University of
Cambridge, where he was a state scholar at St. Catharine's College.

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Case Western Reserve University[1] (CWRU) appointed a new president in
1987, and accompanying this change were the appointments, within a two-
year period, of several new vice presidents and deans, including a vice
president for information services. Together the new management team has
acted to develop a new role for information technology in the education,
research, and service missions of the University. Central to this new
role is the campus-wide communications network, called CWRUnet
(pronounced "crewnet").

CWRUnet features a standardized premise, wire-once cabling
architecture, independence of cabling and optoelectronics, and support
for multimedia information distribution.[2] CWRUnet accommodates a
heterogeneous assortment of microcomputers, servers, mainframes, and
gateways to other data networks, telephone, and facsimile devices. It
also accommodates television distribution equipment for locally produced
programming and supports the link to a local commercial cable television
vendor, telemetry and sensor-type surveillance devices, and remotely-
controlled environmental systems and electronic door locking. In
addition, a sophisticated network management system is used to monitor
and control the operation of the entire network.

The CWRUnet project has been carefully documented, and precise
costs are known for each element in the network. The data services are
presently based on the familiar networking technologies of Ethernet,
TCP/IP, and Novell Netware, and now offer a wide variety of network-
based information services to the campus community. The network backbone
presently uses 100 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) FDDI Token-Ring
technology.

The University administration has developed planning, implementation, 
funding, and operating strategies and tactics for the network, and has 
established the implementation project as one of the president's top 
priorities. Unusual among CEOs, the CWRU president is championing his 
second network; the first was at Dartmouth College. The understanding of 
the implications of this project and the clarity of goals from the 
organization's top executive have made all the difference in making 
CWRUnet a reality.

Requirements for the network and
network-based services

The fundamental purposes of our network are to connect people and
to provide a variety of information resources and services that support
instruction, research, and service to our community and beyond. CWRU
believes that the network will make a substantial contribution to
fulfilling its central purpose. As such, the new campus-wide network was
designed to support a wide variety of academic and administrative
applications in all departments of the University, both for today and
for tomorrow. The academic applications cover both instruction and
research and, at CWRU, we see these two domains substantially
overlapping in many instances.

     Multimedia support

We believe that communications support to our 13,000 students,
faculty, and staff, almost all of whom are "knowledge-based workers,"
requires the processing of information from all types of communications
media, including voice, video, data, image, fax, and audio. While we
need to use these media generally in combination with one another, there
are only a few "information appliances" (a.k.a. workstations) currently
available that support multimedia applications, especially using both
television and interactive computing. In planning for the network, we
needed to ensure that the network would support combinations of media at
each and every port serving a variety of new information appliances yet
to be invented.

     High-speed transmission

A high-speed backbone for a network the size of CWRUnet was implied, but 
before we could size the backbone, we first had to size the basic 
desktop transmission service. We envisioned that ordinary computer 
networking speeds to each desktop, such as Ethernet (10 Mbps) or Token
Ring (16 Mbps), would prove to be inadequate for multimedia
communications, even when compression schemes were employed. Looking at
the power of the newest engineering workstations, we saw networking
capabilities and requirements far beyond Ethernet and Token-Ring speeds.
Thus, the network service to desktops at CWRU would have to be able to
accommodate this and future generations of microcomputer-based
equipment, where each generation is now about two years, and the power
of a workstation in the next generation is approximately double that of
the current one. As such, we made it a "sizing" requirement that the
network was never to be a bottleneck in the transmission of information
from one location on campus to any other location. In practical terms,
we understood this requirement to mean that we needed an OC-3 speed (155
Mbps) backbone at the start and quadruple that when the network was
fully deployed. During succeeding years, the backbone speed would need
to increase again, this time to the range of two-to-four gigabits per
second. Over time, the basic network speed as delivered to each desktop
would be increased to the OC-3 speed to support full multimedia
applications. Applications at some desktops would need speeds of OC-12
and OC-24 (622.5 and 1,245 Mbps, respectively) for scientific
visualization, and the backbone network would be required to handle such
traffic without significant delays.

     Administrative applications

The campus-wide network was designed to also support administrative and 
business services applications across the University. Over time, the 
University expects to develop online, transaction-oriented applications
to acquire and use information to serve students, faculty, and staff.
These applications will use servers and microcomputer-based clients
connected together using the campus-wide network. This configuration
would replace garden-variety, batch processing, mainframe-based
applications which were designed in the 1960s. Although we envisioned
that these administrative applications would not in and of themselves be
demanding of the network, the fact that the network would be ubiquitous
and standardized in its interfaces would facilitate the development,
deployment, and operation of these newly designed applications.

     Library applications

A major application for the network which is being developed at
CWRU is the electronic "library of the future." In our planning we saw a
natural synergy between the network and the library as more and more
information resources and media were developed in or converted to
digital formats. Because we also saw the emergence of imaging technology
as another key building block for the library of the future, we knew
that transmitting images, especially moving images, across the network
would require very great bandwidths. This consideration more than any
other led us to consider fiber optic technology as the principal cabling
medium for CWRUnet.

In a parallel development, we decided to prototype a network-based
CD-ROM server. We envisioned that an automated carousel unit composed of
some eighty or so CD-ROM platters would be yet another networked
information resource. During 1990-91, we offered this service over
CWRUnet in an attempt to see if shareable CD-ROM media were practical.
At present, the carousel holds the equivalent of over 16,000 books.
Through CWRUnet, any user may access these materials from anywhere and
at any time. This type of system avoids the need (and the cost) of
having to put a CD-ROM reader unit on each and every workstation. This
prototype showed us that parallel development of both the network and
network-based services was desirable.

     E-mail and other information services

Electronic mail capabilities are important network services for the
CWRU community, especially as it connects students to each other and
students to both faculty and staff. The CWRU electronic mail system must
serve the entire 13,000-person campus community and must have linkages
to networks beyond the campus. Further, there must exist the capability
to send and receive facsimile messages through the electronic mail
system in an integrated manner.

In addition, the network must accommodate a campus-wide information
system (CWIS) of electronic bulletin boards, which contain a variety of
useful information for students, faculty, and staff, including
calendars, course syllabi, course-specific homework assignments, files
with last semester's exams from which students may study, and so forth.
The campus telephone book in electronic form is now on our CWIS and is
updated biweekly; it comes out with the names, addresses, phone numbers,
and network user IDs for all of the campus community within a few days
of the start of the academic year.

The network also must be a vehicle for providing applications
software to our campus community. Our vision here is that standard
"commercial" software is made available without charge to students,
faculty, and staff from the network-based software library, including a
variety of word processors, spreadsheets, symbolic and numerical
mathematics tools, graphics and statistics packages, and database
managers. The network-based software library delivers a variety of
packages and "courseware." Users do not have to purchase their own
copies of common software packages, but share them through the network-
based software library. This saves many hundreds of thousands of dollars
per year and enforces procedures for proper software licensing.

Lastly, network users need to have access to highly versatile laser
printers in selected locations around the campus. These printers are
free to students for most uses.

     Video services

The network also distributes educational and entertainment
television to classrooms and dorm rooms. CWRU acquires television
programming from commercial satellites, purchases videodisks, and has
extensive production facilities for television on campus. Since we
started offering commercial cable television services over CWRUnet in
1991, students and faculty have become even more enamored of the network
and its possibilities.

     Off-campus connections

Another fundamental requirement for the network is that it fit into
the metropolitan area telecommunications grid to connect the campus to
many off-campus locations, including the homes of our faculty, staff,
and graduate students (our undergraduates live mainly on campus). In
addition, the network has to be connected to off-campus hospitals and
other healthcare facilities, to businesses that want to receive our
continuing education offerings, and to other educational institutions in
our region because our campus libraries share their holdings with the
other major regional academic and research libraries. Other network
connections reach beyond the campus: statewide (OARNET), nationally
(NSFNET and NREN), and internationally (BITNET and Internet). Thus, all
of the citizens of the University are able to maintain electronic
relationships with their peers at other centers of scholarship wherever
they might be.

The network must be able to provide connections to off-campus
systems, including specialized "compute engines" for computer-assisted
design, for supercomputing, for hosts of research software systems in
artificial intelligence and expert systems, and for off-campus
information services, such as Mead Data Central's Lexis and Nexis
systems and the United Press International newswire, a constantly
updated news wire service continually feeding its information products
to the campus community via CWRUnet.

     Phone and telemetry services

The network conducts telephone traffic to the local central office
of our telephone company, Ohio Bell. At present, we purchase CENTREX
services for our office, laboratory, and residence hall telephones.
CWRUnet's premise wiring, as well as its fiber backbone, is being used
to carry telephone signaling efficiently and compactly around the
campus. CWRUnet also carries a variety of other types of signaling:
parking lots are watched over by surveillance television cameras which
transmit over CWRUnet; residence halls and many other buildings have
electronic door locks which open to only authorized persons during
authorized periods of time--customized to each individual's needs as
recorded in a central data base accessible via CWRUnet; and building
energy system controls are managed centrally by transmitting signals
over CWRUnet.

Our vision was that the new network would be the only comprehensive
wiring on the campus, so that all types of communications would have to
use it, including the vendor-supplied telephone service, telemetry, and
control signaling. In short, the campus has only one communications
wiring plant; we do every communications task over CWRUnet.

     Network management

When designing CWRUnet, we wanted to build a high level of network
management capability into the project. We set as a goal to be able to
"see" each attached "information appliance" and all in-line
optoelectronics from a central campus network operations center. If a
device malfunctions, the unit can be disconnected from the network
control center rather than from its specific location. The implications
of this are economy of staffing, surveillance of the operating network,
and operational segmentation of the troublesome unit from the rest of
the network. Such a network management system would cut down on the need
to make emergency "house calls." Repairs would involve a house call, but
that could be a scheduled event. It would also collect operational
statistics which could be used by the system's managers to improve
network performance. Thus, CWRUnet would serve to transmit its own
control and monitoring functions to a pair of network control centers.

Taken together, our requirements for the Case Western Reserve
University network are demanding, but they are not substantially
different from what we expect to see in general use in the twenty-first
century. Giving our students the experiences of learning with the
"network of the future" on the campus of CWRU today will give them
excellent preparation for careers in business, government, and in other
walks of life.

Strategic planning and issues

CWRUnet was developed from a strategic planning process that
considered a comprehensive array of potential uses for the network and
from a vision of what could be done with available "off-the-shelf"
technology. Building a communications network of the size and scope of
CWRUnet is a strategic project, and planning for the network was
undertaken after a networking strategy for the University was developed.

One of the important conclusions of the strategic plan was that the
use of fiber optic cabling as premise wiring was inevitable. The
question then became one of estimating when it would become the default
choice for premise wiring, as it had already become for backbone
cabling. We decided to ask the experts in the laboratories of the
leading communications companies; their experiences were very
enlightening and encouraging. We called vendors of fiber cabling to ask
about costs, and they were also extremely helpful and provided the
information we needed. We built a prototype of a 100 percent fiber
optics network which taught us about connectors and other components
that were part of a complete network installation.

Some of the University's key networking personnel had learned from
network projects at other universities that labor costs are a dominant
component in the wiring of entire buildings. After consulting with
various electrical contractors about the effort needed to wire (i.e.,
retrofit) older buildings, we became convinced that because of the cost
and disruption involved, we could afford to wire the campus's buildings
only this one time within the next 30 to 50 years, except for the
situation where a building unit had to be extensively renovated. Labor
costs could be expected to increase over time; thus, future wiring
projects would be expected to have higher costs than present ones.
Because we planned to use the fiber optic premise wiring
immediately, we did not make a countervailing strategic funds management
argument regarding the wisdom of allocating assets (the cost of the
fiber) to only future use, and the loss of the use of the funds (and
possible income generated by these funds) used to purchase the fiber.

The next immediate issue was considering how to make the premise
cabling independent of the optoelectronics. We recognized that the fiber
could be used for many years, certainly over twenty, but optoelectronics
were being improved significantly on an almost yearly basis. These
improvements were a natural progression in the technologies that build
upon both integrated circuitry, where no plateau was going to be reached
in any foreseeable time, and software, which was driving the operation,
control, and management of networks. In the future, it is likely that
software will provide networks the functionality that will be needed,
thus making upgrading relatively easy when compared to replacing the
electronics hardware which requires much more physical coordination and
management and should be done only when it is needed. We concluded that
we would want to institute a continual upgrading process for the
optoelectronic components by changing them when a user needed the
upgraded services or every seven years on average. This strategy would
work well only if these network components could be made independent of
each other.

The network cabling architecture

CWRUnet has been built upon a cabling architecture that
accommodates the University's strategic vision, which recognizes the
need for both single-mode and multi-mode fiber optic cable in both the
backbone and the premise wiring. It also recognizes the vision of a
wiring plant that is comprehensive and flexible as to its uses. The
architecture also fulfills the requirement for wiring buildings only
once more, a so-called "wire-once cabling architecture." Because the
wires are designed to be independent of the electronics, upgrades are
made only to the electronics, and as often as user requirements dictate.
This is a critically important issue because, heretofore, networks had
been installed without regard to their own evolution. CWRUnet uses a
structured wiring plan that facilitates its own upgrading. As of this
writing, we are now running Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI network
segments, all using the identical wiring configuration. We can
interchange any of these technologies without changing any premise or
backbone wiring.

The cabling architecture used is hierarchical, in three levels. We
adopted as a critical design principle that all types of premise wiring
(level 3) were to be run together in common conduits and that the
premise cabling would be deployed radially from "wire centers" in each
building. Figure 1 shows this arrangement. Each wire center would be
connected over the backbone cable (level 2) in a hierarchical fashion to
an even larger concentration or "wiring hub" (level 1). A wiring hub
typically serves a cluster of buildings. One of these hubs, physically
near the center of campus, currently serves as the central control hub,
but this relationship will change as an alternate site is established
for continuity/recovery in the event of a local disaster. All of the
hubs were to be interconnected using redundant paths that would
crisscross the campus in a suitable topology. This scheme is shown in
Figure 2.

[FIGURE 2 NOT AVAILABLE IN ASCII TEXT VERSION]

The "star wiring" and hierarchical premise wiring design adopted in
CWRUnet makes each network port within a building independent of every
other one, so it is possible to change the network services to an
individual port without changing anything else. In this way, the "wire-
once" requirement was satisfied.

The backbone cabling consists of twenty-four strands each of multi-
mode and single-mode fiber and is routed through conduits which were
installed mainly in existing steam tunnels; some new underground
construction of dual four-inch diameter pipes was required. There is
also one aerial span which crosses railroad tracks. With the
hierarchical physical network topology, it is possible to configure and
reconfigure the logical network to support ring and point-to-point
network topologies, in addition to discrete stars, by changing the
equipment and the fiber patching in the hubs. Each of the hubs serves
six to thirteen buildings, with star connections consisting of eighteen
multi-mode and six single-mode fibers, capable of re-patching to support
multiple logical network topologies.

To provide the network services which were required immediately --
data, voice, and video at each and every faceplate--we assessed the
practicality of using only fiber optic cabling in the premise wiring. If
we had implemented such a plan, we would have found the cost of
delivering telephone and television services to be very high because of
the costs of connecting standard television and voice instruments
directly to fiber cabling. Many networks are being built with fiber
cabling used only in the backbone and with copper cabling--for example,
unshielded twisted pairs (UTP)--as the premise wiring. At CWRU we
inventoried our buildings and found little or no unused UTP; we had no
other choice but to pull some new premise wiring. Clearly, we could have
postponed the use of fiber cabling in the premise wiring if we had found
such unused capacity available.

The primary user interface to CWRUnet is through a faceplate, an
analog of the electrical wallplate. The premise wiring is terminated at
each faceplate. Like electrical service connecting an appliance to the
wallplate, there is a network "jumper" cable which is needed to connect
each terminal device (phone, TV, computer, etc.) to the faceplate. Each
faceplate is served by the CWRUnet "standard" premise cabling which is a
composite of four strands of 8.3/125 micron single-mode fiber, two
strands of 62.5/125 micron multi-mode fiber, one RG-6 coaxial cable, and
four unshielded twisted-pair 24 AWG copper cables. Because of structural
conditions in our buildings, horizontal surface raceway ("wiremold") or
in-wall conduiting was used to protect the premise cabling from future
wear and tear and from penetrations of the walls as a normal byproduct
of customization of these living and working spaces. The cable raceway
uses common paths in the risers and as far as possible in the
horizontals to minimize the amount of raceway, but each faceplate is
served by separate cables in theraceway.

In a project of the scope, complexity, and strategic nature of this
one, adherence to standards and emerging standards was considered to be
of extreme importance. This dictated the choice of fiber size,
specifications and connector type (ST), the decision to provide eight
conductors of UTP connected to an RJ-45 (which is fully compatible with
ISDN services), and the termination arrangements for the cabling. Ease
of administration added to the standards-based case for designing a
single equipment room in each building, whether hub, premise, or both.
The concept of "logical" buildings within a physical building was used
in exceptional situations to reduce the quantity of costly premise cable
and raceway. The structure supporting cable terminations, patching, and
equipment installation in each equipment room was engineered to
accommodate CWRUnet's cabling architecture and provide space for both
current and planned equipment.

Multimedia communications are central to the vision of CWRUnet
services. Today's equipment does not support multimedia signaling
integrated in a manner suitable for CWRUnet. It can be supported,
however, by parallel cable paths of discrete media for voice, data, and
video. CWRUnet was designed to follow this approach until emerging
standards and equipment technology advance to the point that fully
integrated signaling is practical and cost effective. When this happens,
discrete signaling over separate media will be discontinued, and the
unneeded media will be abandoned or used for some other communication
which does not need to be integrated.

Justifying fiber optic cabling

We considered building a formal cost model to justify our decision
to use fiber cabling instead of unshielded twisted pairs as the
principal premise wiring. We abandoned this effort when we realized that
the applications we wanted to develop and distribute using the network
would likely require higher transmission speeds than we could safely say
that copper cabling could support, and that even if the copper cables
would be usable, the cost of the electronics and the complex compression
software that might be required could be very high. In the end, we could
imagine enough cross currents in the trend lines over time to make the
"conservative" decision to deploy fiber cabling at this time, which is
what we did.

With our informal justification argument being somewhat neutral or
ambivalent for or against the use of any one premise wiring cable in
relation to the cost of the project, we realized that the University
could market itself in a distinguishing manner by being the first
university to implement a 100 percent fiber optic network. Clearly, one
of the major telecommunications common carriers was using this
difference to good advantage. In the end, the University administration
was able to argue persuasively that the technical risks in the project
were manageable, the short-term premium costs of fiber optics were
tolerable, and the University's image could only be improved if the 100
percent fiber optic network actually was implemented on schedule.

Network construction

The University contracted with TRW-Information Networks Division
which, in turn, subcontracted with JWP Information Systems-Network
Services to design and construct the system. These firms were selected
after a complete Request For Proposals (RFP) and competitive bid process
were undertaken. The University developed the RFP internally; this
document delineated a set of design principles that a respondent was to
follow. Specifically mandated in the RFP was use of fiber optic cabling
to every faceplate (i.e., desktop).

The University received seven proposals from the leading
telecommunications vendors in the United States. Each proposal was
evaluated by at least three internal reviewers. A systematic rating
score was developed for each proposal with the technical portion
receiving about 70 percent of the weighting and the cost elements the
remaining 30 percent. Two quite different proposals received nearly
identical weighted scores. These two vendors were invited to update
their proposals and a final evaluation was conducted. The winning
proposal was submitted by TRW and Robbins Communications (now part of
JWP Information Systems-Network Services.) The University negotiated and
then entered into a contractual relationship with TRW as the prime
contractor and systems integrator, and JWP as the prime subcontractor,
designer, and builder of the fiber optic network.

Before implementation of CWRUnet could begin, several issues were
addressed in "engineering" how CWRUnet would be installed. These related
to the fast-track schedule required to meet the completion deadline, and
the need to provide for future expansion of CWRUnet services.

A number of electrical subcontractors were engaged by JWP to dig
trenches and core drill the various buildings and to do many other
construction tasks. Structures to support, protect, and conceal the
premise cabling were built. Wiring centers to consolidate the cabling
and to house the active optoelectronics were also constructed. For
example, faceplate acquisition involved reconciling issues of cost,
availability, and esthetics. The eventual faceplate selected was a
standard part, re-engineered to our specifications, and "finished" with
a high quality label for identification and protection from tampering.
Termination of the premise cables raised both technical and time issues.
From a technical standpoint, the issue was how to terminate the fiber
strands. The time issue was the large number (over 20,000) of
terminations to be performed within a tight schedule, an elapsed time of
only a few weeks. After careful consideration and cost analysis, we
decided to have the premise cables prefabricated with connectors at the
faceplate end, and pull the cables "backwards" from the faceplate to the
equipment room. This overcame the technical problem of field termination
of multi-mode and especially single-mode fibers in numerous, rather
awkward locations. Significant time savings were achieved in the
installation of faceplates by eliminating the time required for field
termination at faceplates. Testing and rework time was also reduced
because of the higher quality of the factory terminations.

Central to the physical architecture of the communications network
are the building equipment rooms, which house all of the
optoelectronics. The Phase I project designed, engineered, and
constructed twenty-five of these rooms. Eventually, some 110 rooms will
exist in the eighty-five buildings on the CWRU campus. (Presently, the
network is deployed in seventy-three buildings). CWRUnet depends on the
faceplate for network service delivery to be an invariant entity; it is
the equipment room where the network service is defined through hardware
and software subsystems. A rack/cabinet and wall mounting system for
cabling and equipment--all standard products and components--was 
developed and put into full operation. One of the biggest challenges in 
this domain was the development of overall building space requirements 
for now and the future, designing the most convenient layout for splice 
bays, patch panels, equipment, etc., and doing this within physical
limitations of rooms that could be made available for this purpose.
Building prototypes helped us to refine the design and engineering until
we were satisfied that the cable and equipment mounting would satisfy
both technical and time issues that we faced.

Underlying these implementation issues was the goal of making it
easy to administer CWRUnet's cabling and change the equipment over time.
For the fiber optic cabling, this was achieved through a combination of
the use of fiber optic patch cables (jumpers) for all of the cross
connections, patch panels that are easy to access when open but tightly
secured when closed, and careful labeling of all cables and connectors.
Connection to equipment is by the same jumpers, and all of this
equipment is mounted in standard size racks and cabinets, with standard
rack mount shelving available to accommodate any equipment of non-
standard width. Unanticipated problems were a part of the installation
in this project. They ranged from asbestos contamination, blocked
conduits, and supplier delays to slow adhesion of faceplate labels in
the high summer heat and humidity and blocking of access to an installed
but untested faceplate by a returning student's waterbed. The
entire Phase I project was carefully planned and managed, so that the
active construction period for all 1,861 faceplates, the backbone, and
all other network structures was only ninety-four working days. At peak
periods, over 100 people were working simultaneously in twenty-six
campus buildings. A mixture of hearty cheers and sighs of relief from
the tired but triumphant installation team were heard on August 25,
1989, when the first student successfully used CWRUnet. All of the
design, engineering, and installation practices developed for Phase I
have been used in the later phases because they proved successful and
cost-effective.

CWRU committed to implement a 10,000-node network in eighty-five
buildings in five implementation phases. Phase I with 1,861 ports was
implemented and made fully operational during 1989. Phase II used the
identical design for 1,703 ports and was made completely operational
just before the end of 1990. Phase III with 2,740 ports was implemented
during 1991. Phase IV with some 1,900 ports is presently under
construction. Phase V, which will bring the network to over 10,000
outlets, is scheduled for implementation as new buildings are built
during 1993 and 1994.

Costs and benefits

The total project cost will eventually exceed $18 million. For the
Phase I project, the all-encompassing cost averaged $2,379 per port,
including centrally-based network services. Experience gained in Phase I
enabled reductions in cost for Phase II, to an average of $1,942 per
port. Further cost reductions ($1,732 per port) were achieved in Phase
III. Table 1 provides a breakdown of Phase III costs. These figures are
expressed in terms of each network port or faceplate--the outlet at each
desk--which is the primary connection point of the network. These cost
figures, however, include the optoelectronics, PC adapter cards for
Ethernet or Token Ring, and "jumper cables" necessary to connect a
standard microcomputer to the network faceplate, including IBM
compatibles of almost all types and Apple Macintoshes from the LC to the
IIci and a variety of UNIX workstations. Thus, these figures are all
inclusive.

[TABLE 1 IS NOT AVAILABLE IN ASCII TEXT VERSION]

A second cost analysis was undertaken: we had been told at the
outset of our planning that the relative cost elements of the network
would be very high for fiber optic cabling and optoelectronics. Table 1
shows the breakdown of costs for the elements of labor, materials, and
optoelectronics as actually experienced in Phase III. Direct project
labor was nearly 30 percent, with materials at 25 percent and
optoelectronics at 45 percent. Thus, these data forecast that fiber
optic networks built in the future will, in all likelihood, cost
somewhat less than CWRUnet because optoelectronics costs should continue
to drop over time, while labor costs will continue to increase.
Materials costs will probably remain at the level they are now because
some components will go down in cost while others will increase.

Throughout the construction, the University's Information Network
Services unit kept track of all of the elements of the project with
computer-based drawing packages (e.g., AutoCAD) and databases for all
faceplates, equipment racks, etc. A photo album of significant
installations includes over 300 pictures. These records of the
construction will be maintained and used as part of the University's
network management function. Changes to the network will be planned
using this computer-based information. This time, the "shoemaker's
children" are not going barefoot.

CWRUnet provides connections between over 5,000 end-user
microcomputers and a variety of campus-wide and off-campus information
services, including electronic mail and bulletin boards, the library's
online catalog system, several software library servers, the CD-ROM
carousel, a variety of shared computers (all on campus), and the Cray Y-
MP/864 and Mead Data Central's Lexis and Nexis off campus. Students,
faculty, and staff are routinely checking both local and national news
through the UPI newswire feed. CWRUnet also is connected to regional and
national networks providing communications linkages to other
universities and centers of scholarship and commerce.

As supporting infrastructure, CWRUnet is proving each day that it
helps users get to the information they want and need, that it is
dependable and straightforward to use. Users are finding more and more
uses for the network and requests to be connected are increasing since
they are realizing the value of sharing information and developing new
relationships across the network. This is why the University is
investing so much in this infrastructure.

Planned enhancements

The next network project is to extend CWRUnet off campus following
the standards delineated in IEEE 802.6 Metropolitan Area Network.
Connecting CWRUnet to the University-affiliated hospitals and to the
many businesses that participate in our Instructional Television Network
will be a great step forward.

Another phase of the expansion of CWRUnet will bring it to the
homes of our faculty and students who live off campus. The technologies
to do this are still emerging from the development labs, but we know
that ISDN telephone service will not be the vehicle for the expansion of
CWRUnet. Our interests are more along the lines of the emerging
technologies for broadband-ISDN.

We see the future as having a basic service transmission rate of
155 Mbps (OC-3) into each work space, but even that rate cannot provide
all the services we would like to see develop. Is it too much to wonder
when, not if, multigigabit-per-second service will be a standard utility
in every home and office, each place of business, and every institution?
CWRUnet has established the fundamental wiring plant to support
experiments and the development of prototypes for the telecommunications
future. Thus, the University is planning to develop this new capability.
We will be reporting on the results of this work in the years ahead.

Summary

Case Western Reserve University has successfully finished three
phases of a five-phase project to build a major fiber optics-based
communications network for its campus. One of the keys to the success of
CWRUnet is its status as a high-priority, strategic project of the
University, with top executive support and the consistently enthusiastic
backing of the University community.

The new network can handle a comprehensive offering of services,
including voice, video, data, telemetry, and control signaling. Unlike
other networks, CWRUnet takes both single-mode and multi-mode fiber
cabling all the way to the desktop. The network can accommodate a wide
variety of end-user devices as "information appliances." The network
wiring is independent of the operating optoelectronics, and thus each
can evolve independently of the other. As it was designed and
implemented, it is easily copied because it is made of only "off-the-
shelf" components, including an advanced network monitoring and
management system. CWRUnet has turned out to be an authentic innovation 
and model installation; its successful implementation and operation has 
established a new level in the "state of the art," leading the way for 
both commercial and institutional networking facilities and changing the 
way other networks are being planned and implemented. The CWRUnet 
project is a successful case study of what can be accomplished with 
strategic thinking and careful planning and analysis. We have created a 
map for others to follow through the previously uncharted territory of 
major, fiber-to-the-desktop campus

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Footnotes:

1 Case Western Reserve University is a research university with a
faculty of 1,730, a student body of 8,750, and an administrative staff
of 2,580. During 1991-92, the operating budget of the university was
$293 million, with some 40 percent coming from sponsored research.

2 See the glossary for definitions of technical terms found
in this article.

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Glossary of Terms

Broadband-ISDN: a comprehensive network electronics and software system
that integrates all formats of information (voice, video, data,
multimedia, telemetry, control signaling) in a digital format; features
a range of ultra high speeds from an initial rate of 51 megabits per
second (OC-1) to over 13 gigabits per second (OC-262).

CD-ROM carousel: a set of 80 CD-ROM read units that operate together as
a network-based information resource; users access the CD-ROM-based
information in the carousel across the network as though they had the
CD-ROM platter attached to their own personal computers; the carousel
permits sharing of data bases by more than one user at a time; a
practical and economical method for providing CD-ROM-based information
to the entire campus community.

ISDN services: Integrated Services Digital Network is a replacement for
Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS)--a digital encoded telephone system
replacing the analog telephone system; offers data and voice
transmission services in a fully integrated signal; transmission rates
start at 64 Kbps. ISDN is an international standard developed in the
1970s which is currently being deployed in the United States.

Optoelectronics: the active components of the fiber optics network;
located in a building's network equipment room; processes information in
photonic form rather than electronic form because the fiber optic
network conducts photons, not electrons; converts photonic information
to electronic information for processing using microprocessors and
software.

Premise wiring: the network cabling that runs within a building;
generally consists of two types--horizontal and vertical; horizontal
wiring connects equipment in individual rooms of the building to a point
of concentration on a given floor of a building, from which the vertical
component of the cabling carries the signal to the equipment which is
used to process network-based information.

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