The Hindu Business Line : Networking in a metro

What would you call a portion of the metro that touches the customer? Find the answer to that plus the relationship between IT and social organisation, and a whole lot more...

CHENNAI is getting all the negative publicity it cannot afford as being severely water-starved and politically surcharged, among others. But not far from the city is Bangalore that James Heitzman paints as the "Network City".

It is the fifth-largest metropolis in the country with "a transnational reputation as a centre for science and technology," states the book, from Oxford University Press (www.oup.com) . Subtitled `planning the information society in Bangalore', the book traces the relationship between IT and social organisation, and analyses the evolution of "an inter-organisational model that accompanied the rapid expansion of computer and telecommunication technologies, alongside developments in the educational system, the research community, and the non-profit sector."

It is not as if the city to envy "the hub of a dynamic software industry, India's Silicon Valley" had financial and infrastructure crises, even as it shifted towards a globalised economy. Yet, "There was a radical transformation of the social landscape of the city," writes the author, "as private sector companies, transnational corporations, and non-government organisations began to interact with the state at more model decision-making forums."

The man who would make a difference to the city was born in 1860, in a village near Chik Ballapur. Yes, we're talking about Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya who founded the Engineering College in Bangalore. "He became a nationwide expert in industrial organisation and the management of technology," notes the author about a man whose motto was, `Industrialise or perish.' He was a man with a never-say-die attitude who chaired a board that designed the Farakka bridge over the Ganges when he was 92. Gandhi was "totally opposed to Visvesvaraya in his ambition for Americanising India," but Nehru held different views.

"Something happened in the last two decades of the 20th century that transformed this slow-paced industrial city into a global presence in the information society," observes the author in a chapter titled `Becoming Silicon Valley'. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, played no mean part in `the informatisation of the city'. The book gives due credit to the research bodies: "The availability of expert consultants from the variety of research establishments as a whole seems to have played a very important role in the clustering of high-technology firms." Heitzman concludes with an appreciation of the `beauty of the informational model' that makes it `difficult to hide incompetence or corruption,' and compels "those interested in restricted aggrandisement to devise novel styles of occlusion and obfuscation." Perhaps, you can't spell Bangalore without `i' or `t'.

Last mile, or first?

The networking industry is a divided world, in spite of all connections. Pools of expertise are varied: LAN switching, IP routing, and transport. "The `metro' blends all these areas of expertise," writes Sam Halabi in his intro to Metro Ethernet, from Cisco Systems (www.ciscopress.com) . The book is "the definitive guide to enterprise and carrier metro Ethernet applications." One may argue that Ethernet was not designed for metro applications; or that it "lacks the scalability and reliability required for mass deployments." Now, how to marry "Ethernet's simplicity and cost effectiveness with the scale of Internet protocol (IP) and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks"? Here is where GMPLS, that is generalised MPLS, enters the scene, presenting "a major shift in the operation and configuration of transport networks".

Okay, what do you call the portion of the metro that touches the customer? Last mile, some say, because it is the last span of the carrier's network. However, "in a world where the paying customer is at the centre of the universe, the industry also calls this span the first mile to acknowledge that the customer comes first."

In a chapter titled "L2 Switching Basics" you would know about Ethernet Layer 2 concepts such as `flooding' which allows the fast delivery of packets to their destinations, and `broadcast' that is used for enabling clients to discover resources that are advertised by servers. CIR is not `sir' spelt amiss, but committed information rate; and PIR is peak information rate.

Traffic Engineering is not about vehicle control, but "an important MPLS function that gives the network operator more control over how traffic traverses the network." An indispensable function emphasises the author, "because of the high cost of network assets and the commercial an competitive nature of the Internet." That is something for accountants to bear in mind.

Books2Byte@hotmail.com

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