I am working on a case study for an MIS course and am supposed to get advice from someone who has some computer knowledge. A question I am supposed to answer along with the case study is below. Can anyone point me in the right direction? THANKS! PLEASE E-MAIL @ SADIDA2002@aol.com
c. Can you suggest a radically different configuration technology that would provide better quality?Would it be practical and cost effective to implement? Why or why not? (Hint: Surf the Web or asksomeone you know (other than me) who is competent in these areas.) Why was it not used in thisproject?
ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, established to preserve the history of rock music, opened in
late 1995 in Cleveland. In addition to housing rock and roll memorabilia, such as John LennonÂ’s spectacles and
Jimi HendrixÂ’s guitar, the Hall of Fame devotes about 2000 square feet to interactive multimedia kiosks that feature
real-time audio and video exhibits. Designing and implementing a system that would deliver audio and full-motion
video to 25 multimedia kiosks turned out to be no small undertaking.
The broad goal of the project was to be able to deliver streamed video over a fault-tolerant system to
Macintosh workstations within 2 seconds of a request. The project was contracted out to Consultants in Business,
Engineering, and Research (CIBER), a San Francisco based systems integrator.
Phase One: Ethernet
CIBER initially felt that a 10BASE-T Ethernet system would be adequate for the job. The plan was to have
two servers, each with an identical set of digitized audio and video clips on disk. This would allow one server to
pick up the job if the other went down. With everything connected to the same Ethernet, there was full connectivity
with a minimum of hardware. CIBER set up a demonstration for the customer. Unfortunately, as the load on the
system was increased but still well within projected demand, the system began to drop packets due to congestion.
Phase Two: Token Ring
CIBER then moved to a 16-Mbps token ring. With its higher data rate and more efficient access control
technique, token rink seemed poised to handle the load. With the museumÂ’s opening date approaching, CIBER
went ahead with an installation that involved the token ring LAN, dual servers and Macintosh Quadra 840
workstations. After about a month of installation and shakedown, CIBER was ready for a “dress rehearsal”
demonstration. Much to everyoneÂ’s dismay, the new configuration also dropped packets. Full-motion video consists
of 30 frames per second, and the system dropped about one-half of these frames. With the audio, the delivery was
so choppy that the workstations would fill up a local cache until; it was full, play part of the tune, and then have to
wait for more data to arrive.
With less than three months to opening, CIBER needed to go into high gear. An analysis of the working
configuration indicated both raw performance problems as well as problems in the way that the communication
software and protocols were handling requests. For example, at the server end, the software was chopping the audio
and video streams into very small packets and the Macintosh workstations were unable to reassemble them fast
enough to provide real-time audio and video.
Phase Three: Switched Ethernet
At least, based on the live experiments, CIBER now had a better idea of capacity requirements. The order
called for 10 kiosks to deliver audio and video and 15 to handle audio only. CIBER estimated that they would need
2.6 Mbps of capacity to deliver video to each of 10 workstations and 0.9 Mbps to deliver audio to the other 15. This
amounted to 40 Mbps required to meet their needs. They werenÂ’t going to get that from a shared Ethernet or even
token ring, but switched Ethernet with a 100BASE-T backbone might do the trick, provided the software was
beefed up.
CIBER found a software solution that seemed to work. StarlightÂ’s StarWorks is a software package that
runs on Sun workstations and provides efficient video delivery. For example, with StarWorks, video data are
organized is stripes on separate disks in a disk array (RAID). Pulling video from more than one drive speeds up
access time and enables StarWorks to stream packets in long groups, cutting back on handshaking with the
workstations.
With the software plan in hand, the task was to deploy a 100BASE-T backbone to link up the servers and
10BASE-T switched Ethernet to the Macintosh workstations. This would give each workstation a dedicated 10
Mbps link with a 100Mbps capacity back to the servers. But this phase too, ran into unexpected problems. The configuration used LANnet hubs that provided both 100BASE-T and 10BASE-T ports, but when these were linked
up to the SUNSPARC servers, many problems cropped up. Working with both the hub and server vendors, it is
likely that the problems could eventually have been solved, but the team was working on a tight deadline. On
another project, CIBER had integrated Sun servers with CISO switches. CISCO switches were brought in that
supported 25 switched 10BASE-T ports and nine 100 BASE-T links.
The figure on the page three shows the final configuration. The kiosks are located in two exhibition areas.
Each kiosk gets about 100 hours of use per week. Each kiosk includes a speaker and a touch-control monitor that
are hooked up to a Macintosh workstation, at distances up to 500 feet. All of the workstations and other network
equipment are located in a control room. Once an option is chosen, the signal travels over video cable to the
workstation. If video clips are requested, the request goes to one of the servers, which pumps the data down to the
workstation. Data moves from the server to the switch at 100 Mbps and then to a workstation at 10 mbps. Each
server stores all of the audio and video clips, providing full redundancy. Finally, an HP Vectra with a large capacity
tape drive stores all of the files in backup.
Recently, the museum has extended this networked approach to its Web site (http://www.rockhall.com/),
spreading the rock ‘ n ‘ roll gospel to the networked masses on many platforms. Web users can download the same
audio and video clips available to museum visitors using AppleÂ’s Quicktime. The site provides the Quicktime
software for Apple and Windows platforms.
c. Can you suggest a radically different configuration technology that would provide better quality?Would it be practical and cost effective to implement? Why or why not? (Hint: Surf the Web or asksomeone you know (other than me) who is competent in these areas.) Why was it not used in thisproject?
ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, established to preserve the history of rock music, opened in
late 1995 in Cleveland. In addition to housing rock and roll memorabilia, such as John LennonÂ’s spectacles and
Jimi HendrixÂ’s guitar, the Hall of Fame devotes about 2000 square feet to interactive multimedia kiosks that feature
real-time audio and video exhibits. Designing and implementing a system that would deliver audio and full-motion
video to 25 multimedia kiosks turned out to be no small undertaking.
The broad goal of the project was to be able to deliver streamed video over a fault-tolerant system to
Macintosh workstations within 2 seconds of a request. The project was contracted out to Consultants in Business,
Engineering, and Research (CIBER), a San Francisco based systems integrator.
Phase One: Ethernet
CIBER initially felt that a 10BASE-T Ethernet system would be adequate for the job. The plan was to have
two servers, each with an identical set of digitized audio and video clips on disk. This would allow one server to
pick up the job if the other went down. With everything connected to the same Ethernet, there was full connectivity
with a minimum of hardware. CIBER set up a demonstration for the customer. Unfortunately, as the load on the
system was increased but still well within projected demand, the system began to drop packets due to congestion.
Phase Two: Token Ring
CIBER then moved to a 16-Mbps token ring. With its higher data rate and more efficient access control
technique, token rink seemed poised to handle the load. With the museumÂ’s opening date approaching, CIBER
went ahead with an installation that involved the token ring LAN, dual servers and Macintosh Quadra 840
workstations. After about a month of installation and shakedown, CIBER was ready for a “dress rehearsal”
demonstration. Much to everyoneÂ’s dismay, the new configuration also dropped packets. Full-motion video consists
of 30 frames per second, and the system dropped about one-half of these frames. With the audio, the delivery was
so choppy that the workstations would fill up a local cache until; it was full, play part of the tune, and then have to
wait for more data to arrive.
With less than three months to opening, CIBER needed to go into high gear. An analysis of the working
configuration indicated both raw performance problems as well as problems in the way that the communication
software and protocols were handling requests. For example, at the server end, the software was chopping the audio
and video streams into very small packets and the Macintosh workstations were unable to reassemble them fast
enough to provide real-time audio and video.
Phase Three: Switched Ethernet
At least, based on the live experiments, CIBER now had a better idea of capacity requirements. The order
called for 10 kiosks to deliver audio and video and 15 to handle audio only. CIBER estimated that they would need
2.6 Mbps of capacity to deliver video to each of 10 workstations and 0.9 Mbps to deliver audio to the other 15. This
amounted to 40 Mbps required to meet their needs. They werenÂ’t going to get that from a shared Ethernet or even
token ring, but switched Ethernet with a 100BASE-T backbone might do the trick, provided the software was
beefed up.
CIBER found a software solution that seemed to work. StarlightÂ’s StarWorks is a software package that
runs on Sun workstations and provides efficient video delivery. For example, with StarWorks, video data are
organized is stripes on separate disks in a disk array (RAID). Pulling video from more than one drive speeds up
access time and enables StarWorks to stream packets in long groups, cutting back on handshaking with the
workstations.
With the software plan in hand, the task was to deploy a 100BASE-T backbone to link up the servers and
10BASE-T switched Ethernet to the Macintosh workstations. This would give each workstation a dedicated 10
Mbps link with a 100Mbps capacity back to the servers. But this phase too, ran into unexpected problems. The configuration used LANnet hubs that provided both 100BASE-T and 10BASE-T ports, but when these were linked
up to the SUNSPARC servers, many problems cropped up. Working with both the hub and server vendors, it is
likely that the problems could eventually have been solved, but the team was working on a tight deadline. On
another project, CIBER had integrated Sun servers with CISO switches. CISCO switches were brought in that
supported 25 switched 10BASE-T ports and nine 100 BASE-T links.
The figure on the page three shows the final configuration. The kiosks are located in two exhibition areas.
Each kiosk gets about 100 hours of use per week. Each kiosk includes a speaker and a touch-control monitor that
are hooked up to a Macintosh workstation, at distances up to 500 feet. All of the workstations and other network
equipment are located in a control room. Once an option is chosen, the signal travels over video cable to the
workstation. If video clips are requested, the request goes to one of the servers, which pumps the data down to the
workstation. Data moves from the server to the switch at 100 Mbps and then to a workstation at 10 mbps. Each
server stores all of the audio and video clips, providing full redundancy. Finally, an HP Vectra with a large capacity
tape drive stores all of the files in backup.
Recently, the museum has extended this networked approach to its Web site (http://www.rockhall.com/),
spreading the rock ‘ n ‘ roll gospel to the networked masses on many platforms. Web users can download the same
audio and video clips available to museum visitors using AppleÂ’s Quicktime. The site provides the Quicktime
software for Apple and Windows platforms.
