Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport turned to Cisco Systems for help in building one of the most extensive communications infrastructure upgrades ever undertaken by an airport.
Owned by the city of Atlanta, Hartsfield-Jackson has won numerous number one rankings in customer service, productivity, and efficiency from such organizations as the International Air Transport Association, American Express, and the Air Transport Research Society.
The communications overhaul is part of the airport’s 10-year, $6.3 billion capital development program aimed at expanding its capacity and continuing its record as one of the most outstanding airports in the world. For its communications upgrade, the airport consolidated most of its data, telephone, and video systems onto a converged wired and wireless Internet protocol (IP)-based network, run primarily by Cisco equipment. ‘Rather than build an infrastructure for each communications need we had, we decided to use an IP network to consolidate all of the traffic,’ says Lance Lyttle, the chief information officer for Hartsfield-Jackson .
As part of its efforts to make communications as easy as possible for anyone who visits or works at the airport, Hartsfield-Jackson has built one of the only, if not the only, truly host-neutral IP networks in the world, Lyttle says. The IP network will be shared by virtually anyone who works or visits the airport, including passengers, airlines, retailers, security personnel, and airport operations staff.
Key facets of the $4.5 million communications upgrade include a new fiber optic backbone, an extensive wireless network, and a unique private cellular communications system. In 2001 the Atlanta airport started the first phase of the project, which involved installation of the basic telecommunications infrastructure, such as raceways, cabling, conduits and equipment rooms. The airport began installation of the network’s OC-192 Sonet ring fiber backbone during the second phase of the project, which they finished in 2004. Cisco switches and routers run both the core optical network and its Ethernet-based branch extensions, or ‘edge,’ operations. Lyttle figures the fiber will be good for 20 years and the Cisco equipment will provide enough bandwidth for at least five years.
The Atlanta airport is now in the third stage of the project and focusing on deploying 18 advanced applications for improving operations and services throughout the facility. Lyttle says the goal for the entire communications network is to improve customer service, making passenger visits to the airport as pleasant and hassle-free as possible. The comprehensive network, for example, now makes it possible for airliners to broadcast flight information anywhere in the airport.
A highlight of the project includes the airport’s $1.5 million wireless network, which provides coverage throughout the buildings and at outside maintenance areas. Lyttle’s team used 150 Cisco Aironet 1230 Series access points to cover all 5.8 million square feet of the airport, making it one of the largest indoor hotspots in America.
Lyttle says the wireless network is unique in that it supports ‘WiFi’ services from multiple vendors, including Boingo Wireless Inc., Concourse Communications Group LLC, and Sprint Nextel Corp. The multiple vendors ensure competitive pricing for passengers looking for Internet connections and other ad hoc networking services. Currently, more than 11,000 passengers use the wireless Internet services every month.
Maintenance personnel are also using the wireless network in conjunction with portable devices for managing work orders in real-time. Previously, staff had to update information at centralized ‘docking stations’ or manually input information from paper forms. Some of the airlines are now testing their own applications on the wireless network, Lyttle says. Each group using the wireless network is securely separated from other users with virtual local area network technology, or VLANs, from Cisco.
The airport also installed its own cellular phone antenna infrastructure to ensure dependable coverage throughout the airport, even in the inter-concourse shuttle train. Like the wired and wireless IP network, Atlanta designed the cell system for multiple users. Several telecommunications companies offer cell service over the same antennas so that most passengers will have coverage from their own provider.
Hartsfield-Jackson is relying on its new IP network to run a highly advanced video security system. Regardless of the type of camera used, the system converts video images to IP packets, which are then transported over the network and on to the wireless system, where police, fire, and security personnel using mobile PDA-type devices can view the images. Lyttle’s team is now searching for the most appropriate application to run the system. The speed and flexibility of the video delivery allows personnel to maintain full visibility of all surveillance cameras regardless of where they are in the airport complex. Lyttle says his staff tapped Cisco technology to prioritize wireless traffic so that something as crucial as security video feeds will never suffer from bandwidth bottlenecks.
Lyttle and his staff are also using Cisco IP phones in the temporary trailers housing various business operations while the airport is constructing its new international terminal, a runway, and other structures. Lyttle says the Cisco IP phones require almost no effort to move, since they need only an Ethernet connection. Like a laptop computer, the network automatically identifies the phone and routes calls to it. Though budget considerations have prevented Hartsfield-Jackson from replacing its phone system with an IP-based one, Lyttle says when the airport does make the move, Cisco will likely be its vendor.
Lyttle reports few glitches with Cisco equipment. He says, however, that the wireless deployment has been challenging, given the airport’s concentration of electrical equipment and communications devices that generate radio wave interference. Though some mysteries still persist, they do not affect use of the network. His staff specifically designed the signal from each access point to over lap neighboring access points by 50 percent, virtually eliminating any possible dead spots in coverage.
Lyttle says the project has been an incredible learning experience for him and his six-person team. Lyttle’s previous jobs at other companies mostly involved cutting costs, he says, but this one focused on the needs of customers and network users. He’s says he has enjoyed watching his staff grow as they learned the ins and outs of fiber optics, wireless and converged IP technologies.
On such an extensive project, the challenges were many and various. Most significantly, Lyttle says he and his staff did not have any clean-cut examples to follow. ‘I couldn’t find anyone who had built this kind of shared network infrastructure,’ he says. ‘So we had no point of reference and had to design everything from scratch.’
When formulating the plan for the airport build-out, Lyttle says he wanted to standardize information technology equipment as much as possible to streamline demands on his small staff. And if he was going to place all of his eggs in one basket, he wanted to make sure any vendor he chose would be in business and providing excellent products and service for many years to come.
But Lyttle began his search for a networking vendor in 2000 during the aftermath of the dotcom collapse, and he was concerned about every vendor’s viability, including Cisco’s. So his group performed a case study on the company, examining everything from equipment performance to stock price. While its equipment proved more than dependable, Lyttle says he was particularly impressedand comforted byCisco’s customer base, which included a majority of the world’s Fortune 1000 companies. ‘That convinced me that Cisco would be a safe bet,’ he says. ‘If those companies trusted Cisco, I figured we could too.’
Since then, it has been Cisco’s service that has most pleased Lyttle. Given the scope of the project, Lyttle and his staff needed help sorting out a wide range of issues. Lyttle says Cisco kept technical personnel on call for all aspects of the upgrade. ‘Cisco’s people were here so much they became like members of the staff,’ Lyttle says. ‘That kind of did it for us. Anyone can sell you equipment, but who’s going to give us the support we need?’
Other applications that Lyttle’s staff is now developing to run on the IP network include an automated parking revenue collection service and a security access control system. The airport will cap off the project with final touches in the construction of a network operations center for monitoring and remotely managing the extensive communications system.
In reality, however, the work will never stop. The network is now capable of supporting nearly any multimedia application or service that might come along during the next decade. True to the spirit of the first four years of the project, Lyttle and his staff have set up a networking technologies lab to test ‘anything and everything,’ in search of applications and other communications innovations to best complement the airport’s state-of-the-art infrastructure. Certainly, that should help Hartsfield-Jackson keep its industry-leading operations and customer service on schedule for many years to come.
Source: Cisco Systems
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