Network Cabling Rollout

Taalus has worked with Daventry District Council since 1990. The company was originally engaged to support and maintain their traditional ICL network, which required a wide range of skills to manage the active and passive elements of these cabling systems.

With the introduction of Ethernet based applications in the early ‘90’s, uppersystem then installed some of the UK’s first Structured Cabling Systems into the Council’s offices to support specific applications.

By 1998, most IT equipment was supported by Structured Cabling. At that time a major upgrade of the existing phone system was planned, and the Council took the opportunity to upgrade the whole network to a single cohesive cabling system supporting data and voice throughout the site.

Taalus successfully tendered for this work and a new cable system based on RW Data’s "System-5" was installed throughout the Civic Offices, complete with a 15 year manufacturer warranty. The whole site was recabled on an ‘out of hours’ basis, with a detailed migration plan to transfer staff, department by department, so that there was no disruption to the working environment.

This was followed by a rollout of new cabling systems to the Council’s satellite offices.

In 2000, the legacy Ethernet hub and switch equipment was replaced by a 10/100/1000 solution, with Gigabit fibre optic backbones. Taalus was successful in this tender for this upgrade, and installed the fibre optic infrastructure and new chassis based network hardware to support the increases in network traffic.

"This work was carried out due to increasing demand on the network bandwidth. The performance benefits of the 1Gb fibre backbone were instantly apparent with the user commenting on how much quicker everything was working. Again installation was trouble free and the end result has been working faultlessly since the installation date." Neil Smith

In 2002, the Council had to replace the existing phone systems, and decided to investigate LAN Telephony with the objective of providing better customer service with its clients. It was decided to employ uppersystem on a consultancy basis to assist in this project, due to the high level of knowledge that the company has both of Local Government and the network at DDC.

"It was an obvious choice because nobody knows Daventry District Council’s network infrastructure better than Taalus."
Dave Parry, Customer and ICT Services Manager

Through consultation with key staff throughout the Council, Taalus prepared a Technical and Requirements Specification for a proposed LAN Telephony solution. This was used as the basis for the tender issued by the Council, and Taalus then provided assistance in the tender evaluation process. Taalus’ in depth knowledge of the marketplace ensured we were also able to assist the Council in getting exceptional value for money whilst at the same time covering the Council’s user requirements. This resulted in the Council implementing a 3Com NBX LAN Telephony solution to serve all its sites.

"System administration and maintenance is easier and cheaper. In an office environment, particularly in Local Government, there are lots of moves and changes. The 3Com system recommended by Taalus has accommodated our needs and makes my job easier." Dave Parry

Taalus redesigned the LAN to support "Power over IP" to allow deployment of IP phones powered from the data cabinets. This included upgrading core switches to support Quality of Service and Traffic Prioritisation, with implementation of 3Coms 3NS Network Management System to manage the network.

By the start of 2004, the core chassis equipment was not providing the performance levels required and lacked resilience, so a major redesign was carried out. As the first company in the UK to deploy 3Com’s XRN (eXpandable Resilient Networking), Taalus was able to provide an integrated resilient solution based on this system.

Following consultation with a number of IT staff within the Council, a design was produced which provided dual homing for a number of core servers as well as dual resilient links to other parts of the network. The servers are supported by two active links, each one to a different switch. This means that even a catastrophic failure of a switch will not leave the Council without core applications, and provides double the bandwidth of other comparable solutions.

The network upgrade was carried out on an "out of hours" basis, and the 3Com XRN installation was achieved with minimal disruption to the whole network.

"The XRN solution was selected over the usual enterprise solution due to the flexible scalability and performance benefits offered over our current solution which we had out grown. The benefits from a service delivery point of view were resiliency, scalability, performance and the ability for systems to continue working even if one of the units were to fail. The installation went very smoothly and work was carried out on an "out of hours" basis and was completed on time and to schedule." Neil Smith

Taalus continues to provide district wide maintenance services for Daventry District Council’s network infrastructure, as well as ongoing changes and amendments to the network infrastructure.

All Taalus’ services have been carried out by our in-house staff and Taalus can now demonstrate a fifteen-year track record of providing services to Daventry District Council.

"In the future, especially e-Gov initiatives, I foresee a continued successful partnership with Taalus, in which both parties enjoy a mutual benefit."
Dave Parry

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