- Oracle and Cisco Team to Demonstrate Ultimate Network Computing Environment
- Cisco Selects Oracle8 for Internal Use,Network-Services Products
NEW YORK -- As part of its June 24 launch of Oracle8TM, the Database for Network ComputingTM,Oracle Corp. has set up a live hands-on network at Radio City Music Hall to allow participantsto check out network computing for themselves. Visitors are able to choose from among more than50 applications, including CNN's CustomNews, web-based electronic commerce, HR, manufacturingand finance applications as well as distance learning videos.
"The network had to be designed to switch high-bandwidth traffic, such as video, to more than250 network computers, PCs, workstations and database servers located throughout the hall,"said Ray MacDonald, a manager of network and telecommunications for Oracle, who designed thenetwork. "The network also had to be designed to support multimedia traffic efficiently, andhave the flexibility to set up virtual LANs (VLANs) as required."
Oracle selected Cisco Systems Inc. to provide the reliable, high-speed network required tosupport this demanding computing environment. The network is based on four high-performance LANswitches from Cisco -- two Catalyst 5000s and two Catalyst 5500s. The Catalyst switches providededicated 10 or 100 Mbps Ethernet connectivity to each of the network computers, PCs,workstations and servers on the network.
The four switches are distributed around the building, with three switches connected in starconfiguration to a central Catalyst 5500 switch, located on the main stage. These switches areinterconnected using a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet backbone. The high-performance Oracle databaseservers and video servers are connected to the LAN switches using Fast Ethernet. A router withtwo T1 links is used to provide connectivity to the Internet.
"While the network needs to provide live Internet connectivity, the toughest mandate for anynetwork is to support streaming video," MacDonald noted. "We wanted all network computers andother workstations to be able to access video applications. We decided to use switchingtechnology that could support video and mission-critical data traffic on the same network."
The Catalyst switches provide excellent multicast support for video applications by means oftheir architecture which permits packets to be transmitted efficiently to multiple ports on thenetwork. Cisco IOSTM software also ensures that multicast traffic is transported efficientlyend-to-end across the network and only to users that actually require that traffic.
To ensure quality of service for the wide range of applications on the live network, theCatalyst switches allow servers supporting time-critical applications to be given higherpriority than servers supporting non-time critical applications, such as e-mail.
The Catalyst 5000 and 5500 switching systems are ideally suited for the demands of the Oraclenetwork. The market-leading Catalyst 5000 family is a flexible modular switching system thatoffers high-density 10 Mbps Ethernet and 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connections to NCs, PCs andhigh-speed servers, while connecting to adjacent switches and routers over high-speed trunkssuch as Fast Ethernet, FDDI and ATM. The new Catalyst 5500, with its multi-gigabitarchitecture, is designed to support a smooth migration to Gigabit Ethernet and provides thescalability, flexibility and redundancy required for building large, switched intranets -- suchas those used in a network computing environment.
The Radio City Music Hall network is managed using CiscoWorksTM for Switched Internetworkssoftware, which allows device configuration, topology views of the network, VLAN management,and traffic monitoring and reporting.
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