Product category:
Electrical Services
News Release from: Tyco Electronics/AMP NETCONNECT Division | Subject: Intelligent infrastructure management system
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 07 April 2006
Tyco Electronics infrastructure
management system
Tyco Electronics supplies intelligent infrastructure management system to Belfast City Hospital.
An intelligent infrastructure management system based on Category 6 cabling has been supplied to Belfast City Hospital by the AMP NETCONNECT Division of Tyco Electronics in conjunction with installer Black Box Network Services NI of Antrim, Northern Ireland The new system provides a robust and future-proofed network infrastructure for the main cancer research and treatment centre in Northern Ireland
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 5 Nov 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Belfast City Hospital is a very prestigious university teaching hospital which originated as a workhouse in 1841.
Most of the old buildings have been replaced by the distinctive tower, opened in 1986, which dominates the Belfast skyline.
Located on a 32-acre campus, the hospital's strategic focus is on the development of regional cancer and renal services, as well as several other important regional specialities.
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The hospital is internationally known for its comprehensive cancer research programme, which has led to the establishment of a unique transatlantic partnership between the National Cancer Institute of the United States and both parts of Ireland.
2005 saw the development of a state-of-the-art Oncology Centre with the most modern diagnostic and therapeutic equipment.
As well as research facilities, the exemplar design incorporates four wards with a total of 84 beds, significant outpatient services and space for complementary therapies.
The Health Trust's local area network (LAN) extends over two sites - Belfast City Hospital and Belvoir Park Hospital within the Health and Personal Social Services (HPSS) National Health Service wide area network (WAN).
The new Oncology Centre uses an extension of the Belfast City Hospital's LAN.
Within the Oncology Centre, the client required a robust and future-proofed communications network which was capable of running virtual local area networks (VLANs) for each medical specialist division and system.
As well as running a VLAN for general PC use for email, file sharing and access to hospital systems, separate VLANs were required for LinAcs (medical treatment machines delivering radiotherapy to patients) and Cancer Centre imaging.
In addition, VLANs were required to allow other medical groups within the Cancer Centre to access systems across the HPSS WAN - for example, local health Trusts and the Radiotherapy Physics Section of the Northern Ireland Regional Medical Physics Agency.
As the system involved the administration of several different networks, some of which were used for patient treatments, it was vital that the client should be able to monitor the physical status of the network at any given time with the best accuracy and with minimal down time.
Belfast City Hospital had clear prerequisites regarding the performance of the network infrastructure.
It was essential, for example, to manage risk in order to minimise the risk of network faults and failures and to maximise uptime and reliability.
The network also had to have ample resilience in order to maximise resistance to faults and failures and provide the ability to recover in the shortest possible timescale.
Another requirement was future-proofing - so as to provide sufficient capacity and quality to satisfy both initial demand and also potential requirements of future technologies.
Other essential elements included quality of performance - with the need to minimise error rates and the need for re-transmission of lost or corrupted data; flexibility - to maximise the network's ability to support a wide range of operational technologies and to offer a variety of solutions; and network management - to maximise the ability to pro-actively manage the network.
To implement the network solution, the hospital chose to work with Black Box Network Services NI because of the existing relationship between the organisations and Black Box Network Services NI's ability to supply and install the complete network system.
Black Box Network Services NI proposed a solution which rose to the main challenges posed by the hospital - that of a robust network which allowed for future expansion and the ability to monitor with the best accuracy the real-time status of the physical network.
The final solution consisted of an AMP NETCONNECT Category 6 AMPTRAC Connectivity Management System with iTRACS software providing the management tools to monitor and administer all moves, adds and changes on the network.
The project commenced in early 2004, and began by connecting the new Oncology Centre to the main hospital site using a blown fibre backbone linking each of the 12 communications locations.
Internally, the building was flood-wired over six floors with Category 6 cable linking out to four outlet points at each workstation, covering a total of 3200 active outlets.
The cables were terminated in 42U open patching frames using a double presentation of intelligent patch panels connected to Cisco switches and in turn to the AMPTRAC analysers.
On the software side, the iTRACS software provided a powerful and fully automated intelligent infrastructure management database that bridged the physical and the logical network layers.
Several software tools satisfied the management requirements for the hospital, including an advanced change control module providing real-time capacity planning and change control management (including circuit tracing and work order generation), with errors being prevented by a suite of alarms.
CAD graphics provide details of every floor plan and closet location data, while monitoring software gives detailed asset identity, exact location and connectivity information on every IP and voice device - representing approximately 6024 ports - connected to the network.
All physical changes, both authorised and unauthorised, to the entire network are monitored.
Commenting on the new system, Keren Foster, Systems Specialist in the Hospital's ICT Department, said: 'Considering the scale of the project, the fact that it was completed without encountering any real issues or problems is a tribute to the professionalism and teamwork of all involved'. Request a free brochure from Tyco Electronics/AMP NETCONNECT Division ...
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