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National Library News

October 1995, vol. 27, no. 10

Telecommunications Architecture and Infrastucture Changes at the National Library of Canada

by William L. Newman, Manager, Systems and Telecommunications, Information Technology Services and AMITEL Project Manager

Prior to 1993, the National Library of Canada's telecommunications technology infrastructure was generally unsuited to the institution's increasing, and increasingly complex, technological needs. Problems included an insufficient number of Local Area Network (LAN) cabling drops for workstations; no space for additional cables in telecommunications cabling ducts at the Ottawa headquarters building at 395 Wellington Street; outdated LAN technology; mainframe/terminal-oriented data connections over dedicated circuits and packet networks; and low-capacity workstations running under the DOS operating system. Although the Library had an Internet connection, its use by most staff members was limited to electronic mail because each employee's workstation did not have an Internet address.

Assessing the Library building's capacity to support technological developments, the Department of Public Works (now Public Works and Government Services), the landlord of federally owned buildings, gave 395 Wellington Street an IQ of only three out of a maximum of 50 points. Some 24 percent of the IQ weighting was for the telecommunications cabling infrastructure of the building, while 59 percent was for telephone technologies and services, and the remaining 17 percent for other facilities such as video conferencing and network management. The cabling infrastructure was a prerequisite for making improvements in the other telecommunications areas.

Early in the 1990s the Library began the process of developing AMICUS, a new library information management system, to replace the ageing DOBIS system. AMICUS is a client/server system requiring a sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure. It was also clear that technological developments would continue to escalate both within and outside the Library, and that an upgrade of the technological infrastructure was essential.

working on AMITEL
In August 1992, the Library inititated a project parallel to AMICUS to design a new telecommunications architecture and to provide an implementation of this architecture. Both the architecture and the project were called AMITEL. The term "telecommunications architecture" was defined as the set of management decisions, policies and guidelines that set the rules for all future telecommunications acquisitions and for making revisions to existing networks. It was agreed that AMITEL needed to be flexible to adapt to changing requirements and changing technology; open to simplify interconnection with the Library's partners; reliable; secure; and able to implement open standards to support procurement of standards-conformant products and services from multiple vendors.

Definition of the AMITEL architecture involved investigating and selecting appropriate telecommunications standards to include in AMITEL. Implementation of the AMITEL architecture involved analyzing how to implement the standards in the Library; and the acquisition and installation of AMITEL standards-compliant hardware and software products.

For the telecommunications recabling part of the AMITEL project installation challenges included restricted space; protection of valuable materials and collections; security considerations; other building projects proceeding at the same time (e.g., a fire-suppressant system in 395 Wellington Street); aesthetic considerations, especially in public areas; and the need to disrupt as little as possible the staging of public events and the work of staff members at both 395 Wellington Street in Ottawa and 25 Eddy Street in Hull.

After a trying period for all concerned, by late 1993 the milestone of the cabling installation was achieved. The new structured cabling system has many advantages over the previous installation, including the flexibility to handle new equipment and inexpensive moves, additions, and changes of telephones and workstations.

While the cabling was being installed, the LANs throughout the Library were being changed to the Ethernet LAN standard, and new workstations with the Windows operating system were being installed. Windows is the client operating system for AMICUS, so the Library wanted to switch to Windows well in advance of AMICUS implementation to allow Library staff ample time to learn Windows. Library-wide Windows training began during the workstation implementation.

A dedicated microwave communication channel and product serves to link the Library buildings at 395 Wellington Street and 25 Eddy Street. The Library owns this microwave installation. The cost of purchase will be recovered in less than two years compared to the cost of leasing a communications line that is more than six times slower than the speed of the microwave link.

All external telecommunications traffic, including Internet traffic and packet-switched traffic, must enter or exit the Library through a "firewall". This security device filters telecommunications traffic and only allows specified protocols on specified machines. Another filtering mechanism allows only specified destination and source communications addresses for certain protocols and machines.

The implementation of AMITEL has proved to be a sound basis for any-to-any connectivity. It is flexible enough to adapt to changing requirements: for example, the Library was able to provide quickly a high-quality Internet gopher server and a World Wide Web server with the support of the AMITEL configuration.

Through the AMITEL infrastructure, the Library's partners and clients can communicate with the organization by using the telecommunications mode of their choice, including the Internet, dedicated circuits, the public network services of Stentor and Unitel, dial-up, and the Canadian Government Enterprise Network. This permits the use of the most efficient and cost-effective mode of communication for a particular institution.

In more than a year of operation, the AMITEL network has proved to be reliable, with virtually no downtime on any of the major network components. With AMITEL as its underlying telecommunications infrastructure, the National Library is indeed well positioned to provide high-quality information technology-based products and services to its clients.

For more information on the AMITEL project, contact: