Lead

Guwahati shows the way

vedantiNET is a metro area network connecting all of Guwahati. Abhinav Singh reports.

A unique project, vedantiNET, is underway in Guwahati, Assam, where S M Computer Consultants have undertaken the ambitious task of connecting PCs across the city by means of a metropolitan area network (MAN). The project aims to provide multiple services to subscribers within the city using a fibre optic backbone which stretches across Guwahati. Peak bandwidth is 1 Gbps in a redundant manner round the clock. Independent households, multi-dwelling apartments, industrial houses, corporate offices, financial and educational institutions and all other establishments where computers can be networked are brought into an inter-networking environment facilitating Internet gateway access with video, voice and data services—plus a list of other services (see box). The offices of IDBI, Indian Oil and the North East Development Financial Institution in the city have already connected their PCs to this service.

The origin

The project was conceived in mid-2004, and went live at the end of May 2006; it is still being extended. Explains Sanjib Barthakur, CEO of S M Computer, “We wanted to offer high-speed connectivity to our customers, and offer them a number of services through a physically laid-out network, hence we thought of using MAN.” About 55 people are involved in the project. Putting it in place was a challenge, admits Barthakur, “We had to take special permission from the government to lay the fibre backbone, and also had to set up the steel transmission posts which carry the fibre. We undertook the project all by ourselves.”

The company has gone in for fibre optic cables, L3 and L2 switches, firewalls, last-mile distribution switches and different networking accessories from D-Link. Says Barthakur, “We found that the local support from D-Link in Guwahati was as per our expectations. The per-port price of D-Link was very competitive, and almost half the price quoted by other vendors such as Cisco.”

The deployment

The first backbone passes through different locations of the city, and connections are offered to subscribers within 3 km of the POP (point of presence) in any direction. The fibre backbone touches access POPs in different locations of the city, from where distribution L3 switches extend copper through long reach Ethernet switches to customer premise equipment, which in turn connect to last-mile service switches for a UTP connection to the end-user. The control hub location falls in the same fibre ring, and houses the broadband service manager, content engine, firewall, router, L3 & L2 switches with dual processor servers, and network attached storage of 5 TB capacity.

There are also transmission pillars on any one side of the road in the city, and the distance between pillars is 50 metres or less. There is absolutely no sagging of overhead cables, for which pulleys have been incorporated in the cable-bearing set-up in the pillars to exert linear tensile force. In exceptional cases, transmission pillars run on both sides of the road for a very short distance, and near road junctions only, depending on field obstruction. The pillars are erected on the edge of the footpath and the road. At about 50 locations in the city, the cable terminates into a building at the roadside. Depending on signal traffic and network segmentation, more than one stretch of cable runs through the pillars for short distances.

Through the MAN, it has become possible for S M Computer to offer multiple services to its subscribers. Notes Barthakur, “We have been able to maximise the utilisation of the network due to this deployment, and offer high speed connectivity to our subscribers.” Expansion is underway, and till now 1,000 PCs are connected to the MAN. Going forward, it can connect thousands of PCs to the network. The total cost of the project till now is estimated to be Rs 5 crore, and is expected to rise with more connections in the offing.