Contact us Heritage collections Image license terms
HOME ACL ACD C&A INF CCD Mainframes Super-computers Graphics Networking Bryant Archive Data Literature
Further reading □ OverviewJANETEARNRAL LANNetwork News 25Network News 26Network News 27Network News 28Network News 29Network News 30Network News 32
CISD Archives Contact us Heritage archives Image license terms

Search

   
CCDNetworking
CCDNetworking
ACL ACD C&A INF CCD CISD Archives
Further reading

Overview
JANET
EARN
RAL LAN
Network News 25
Network News 26
Network News 27
Network News 28
Network News 29
Network News 30
Network News 32

Local Area Networking 1984 - 1994

Technologies for local area networking had been under investigation at RAL since the early 1980s with the aim of providing communications facilities within the RAL site with bandwidths in the order of 1 Mbs rather than the 48 kbs or so then available over wide area networks. The initial installations were Cambridge Rings, a UK technology that had strong backing from the Joint Network Team, and these were in use at the beginning of this period.

The next major step was in 1987 when a fibre optic site backbone, capable of supporting 10 Mbs, was installed to interconnect a set of local wire-based networks in 'villages' of closely related (physically or managerially) computers. The new network used Ethernet technology which by this time had become the dominant LAN technology worldwide. Villages were connected to the backbone via "bridges" which allowed through only traffic destined for other villages, thereby limiting the demands on the backbone.

There were no particular restrictions on the protocols that could be used provided they did not adversely affect the network. In practice the main ones were IP and DECnet phase IV, and there was some use of Apple-talk, Novell, Pink Book and DECnet phase V.

By the early 1990s thirteen villages with about 600 computers, ranging from mainframes to PCs, were connected. The network was generally robust and it had become an essential part of the Laboratory's technical infrastructure. However the backbone was starting to show signs of overloading and this could be expected to become more severe as, for example, the large network-accessible data store at Atlas was developed further.

In 1992 the installation of new FDDI (Fibre Distributed Data Interchange) technology, capable of operating at up to 100 Mbs, began. Initially a small FDDI dual ring was tried out successfully in the Atlas Centre as a means of connecting the Cray and IBM machines to the Atlas ethernet. The next step was the installation of an FDDI backbone for the RAL site to which villages, which might also be using FDDI or retaining their existing ethernets, could connect through routers which enabled control over traffic and provided protection for the backbone from untoward events in any of the villages. Initially five villages introduced FDDI for their internal networks and others converted later. Like its predecessor, the new network proved to be robust and it served the Laboratory well.

Related literature

⇑ Top of page
© Chilton Computing and UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council webmaster@chilton-computing.org.uk
Our thanks to UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council for hosting this site