jsloan@wright.EDU (John Sloan) (03/17/89)
I'd like to tap into the collective wisdom of the net regarding long-term network planning. I'm looking for examples of instruments (polls, surveys, literature searches, etc.) that indicate what services users in the near future (5 years from now) will expect from their networked computing environment. This is mainly targeted at a campus local area network, but such a LAN would also be integrated into wide area networks (e.g. NSFnet or whatever replaces it). I'm interested in... o What are the possible new network services that the networking community foresees coming in the next five to ten years? o What are the implications of those services for campus networking, in regards to bandwidth, topology, design, etc.? o What surveys, polls, etc. have been used at organizations in the past to determine what the user community's perceived, real, and foreseeable needs are? Please email responses to the addresses below. I will be more than happy to summerize for the net. jsloan%spots.wright.edu@relay.cs.net ...!uunet!ncrlnk!wright!jsloan ...!osu-cis!wright!jsloan Thanks in advance, on behalf of the Network Planning Task Force. Now, here's some background... Wright State University is currently going through a planning process to determine user needs, both known and potential, for a future local area network. We already have a baseband Ethernet-TCP/IP based campus LAN in place, with perhaps 175 or so nodes, ranging from VAXen, Suns, terminal servers, PCs, etc. Growth in the past two years has been high, but we expect growth over the next five years to be even more steep. We're interested in deploying a larger scale network, with a broader scope then the usual IPC/telnet/ftp/email/NFS/X11 functionality (but not at the expense of supporting these traditional services well). We're interested in looking at (but are not committed to) integrating video, telephone, voice, etc. along with data. Some of the technical decisions are pretty straightforward, at least at the administrative level. For example, fiber currently has no competition for high bandwidth. You can argue for broadband, or perhaps for future high-temperature superconductors. But in the near term, fiber optic cable is it. Mostly what we are interested in right now is establishing a networking philosophy, and a vision of the future of networking to support it. To do that, we need, in part, to know what services the users may expect to have available in the future, and what the implications are for the network. To get the ball rolling, I can recommend the following resources as a starting point to anyone interested in this topic. _Campus_Networking_Strategies_, Caroline Arms, ed., Digital Press, 1988 (an EDUCOM book containing case histories of campus LAN deployments at ten universities ranging from small liberal arts schools to very large multicampus institutions) _Network_Requirements_for_Scientific_Research_, Barry M. Leiner, RFC1017, August 1987 _Critical_Issues_in_High_Bandwidth_Networking_, B. Leiner, ed., RFC1077, November 1988 John Sloan +1 513 259 1384 jsloan%spots.wright.edu@relay.cs.net Wright State University Research Center ...!uunet!ncrlnk!wright!jsloan 3171 Research Blvd., Kettering, OH 45420 ...!osu-cis!wright!jsloan Logical Disclaimer: belong(opinions,jsloan). belong(opinions,_):-!,fail. -- John Sloan +1 513 259 1384 jsloan%spots.wright.edu@relay.cs.net Wright State University Research Center ...!uunet!ncrlnk!wright!jsloan 3171 Research Blvd., Kettering, OH 45420 ...!osu-cis!wright!jsloan Logical Disclaimer: belong(opinions,jsloan). belong(opinions,_):-!,fail.