Sometimes you have to ask yourself (unfortunately, your top management rarely does) if a certain client's business is worth it. I don't necessarily mean the hassle factor in implementing, but if they are not forthcoming on information, and are too secretive, you may be doomed to have a dissatisfied customer.
Perhaps this story, presumably from a different industry, might help you with them. In the early 1960's, the CIA was building its headquarters, under the general management of the government-wide construction management agency. Obviously, at some stage of the construction, the heating and air conditioning had to be designed, and the subcontractor asked the necessary question, "how many people will be in the building ( to know how much body heat would load the air conditioners)? CIA: "We can't tell you." Contractor: *sigh* Installed on best estimate. Heating OK, A/C didn't work. CIA: "We won't pay you until you fix it." Contractor: "We'll put thermostats in every office so we can fine tune." That made it worse, because people constantly adjusted them and the system couldn't stabilize. The contractor then put all the thermostats into locked boxes, had a technician adjust them and lock them, and things worked briefly. Unfortunately, no one had thought of certain customer skills. There is, in CIA Junior Officer Training, a course called "Locks and Flaps." The significance of this was that if an office didn't have an occupant who knew how to pick locks, someone just down the hall did. Every thermostat went crazy. At this point, the contractor sued. After explaining why they couldn't properly size the system because the CIA wouldn't tell them the load, the judged asked the CIA "is this true?" When he heard the sheepish admission "yes," he slammed down the gavel and told the CIA "pay them. Case closed." Anyway, I can believe a financial industry client does have this much bandwidth, for reasons of experience. The same principle holds as if they were T1s, however: get the carrier/telco to multiplex them into higher-speed aggregates that you can feed to a router, multiplexer, or switch. Even if they have 188 DS-3's, this still should groom into some number of OC-48's or OC-192's. (slight plug) I've discussed this at length in my "WAN Survival Guide" (Wiley). One major consideration will be the line utilization. Sometimes, clients such as this want the low delay of very high speed lines, but don't actually put that much data on them. In those cases, you can get away with a high-speed router interface but not overload it with forwarding. Measurements are essential before you do this. You will also want to have direct engineering access to the carrier(s) they use, to discuss grooming and redundancy strategy, and how the carriers will support physical diversity. Another thing that worries me is that you describe this as a hub and spoke. With this much data, don't they have at least one hot standby location? If they, for example, don't have at least two geographically dispersed sites on a SONET ring or a more modern equivalent, they are insane...although you may already have concluded that. Even at the individual sites, there should be physically diverse local loops. Given the availability of metro Ethernet and 10G Ethernet, this isn't an overwhelmingly difficult thing to do, or you might just do drop-and-repeat WDM. The data centers, of course, would have to be cross-connected to stay synchronized; that's why I say drop-and-repeat rather than add-and-drop. >sorry.... >whole project is on NDA signed. >that's why so many restrictions...... >least i can say is its on financial sector. > > >"Roberts, Larry" wrote: > >> Wow, that makes be feel a little better, although I am still baffled buy >the >> sheer number T-3's required for that. I'm curious though what type of >> business is this? Can you at least throw us a bone... >> Thanks >> >> Larry >> >> >> -----Original Message----- > > From: Vajira Wijesinghe [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >> Sent: Thursday, July 04, 2002 3:12 AM >> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Subject: Re: multiple Individual T1 termination --urgent [7:47944] > > >> Hi Group, >> >> Thank you very much for your valuable comments, arguments and suggestions >> made on the above subject. It really helped me to reveal what is hiding at >> the customer premises. >> >> In fact we had to bid for re-structuring the client's existing network >> equipment. The client continually insisted that they are having is >> individual T1's. Further, we couldn't get an opportunity to inspect the >site >> and even the client couldn't reveal the type of current routers used..... >> bit tuff job. >> >> I had to forward some of the emails received from you'all to the client to >> convince them thay should be having T3's. Unfortuately the network was >> maintained by some third party and client was not too sure. However after >> some time, client confirmed that they are having T3's........instead of >> T1's, with some apologies...... >> >> In fact, this is first time I came across a requirement of 188 T1's to >> connect. That's why I check with the group to see whether somebody has done >> it before..:)) >> >> So thanks again roberts, craig, brian, chuck, howard, peter, mike, phillip >> and nrf for the valuable input you have given. >> > > Take care. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=48103&t=47944 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
