Allied Telesis SwitchBlade AT-SB4008 Manual

Case Study | King County Solid Waste Division
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Networking
King County Solid Waste Division transforms a simple
equipment reshuffle into a strategic network redesign

About the Customer
In the solid waste business, you learn to think twice before you toss
things away. Especially network switching equipment that’s still doing
a good job handling the traffic. But you also learn to plan for the
future.You want to be sure you’ve got solutions that can accommo-
date growth – whether you are talking about an increase in waste
or emerging technology in the years ahead.
That’s why when Ken Willis saw the opportunity to move some of
his core switching equipment to a satellite office, and redefine his
central network with an Allied Telesis AT-SB4000 series switch, he
jumped at the chance.
“Our Cedar Hills facility was upgrading to a better connection,
through a program the county was offering,” says Willis.“So we
wanted to update their equipment to capitalize on that new band-
width.We also wanted to consolidate and upgrade the systems
here in the main office.We realized we could move our current
equipment to Cedar Hills, which would multiply their capacity by 10
times, and then move some of their equipment out to upgrade our
remote transfer stations.That way everyone
could get a better network at the same time, with very little waste.”
More Than Just Trash Removal
Ken Willis is the Information Systems Administrator for the King
County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, Solid Waste
Division (SWD), located in Seattle,Washington. As one of the
largest counties in the nation, King County covers more than 2,200
square miles, and the SWD is responsible for designing, operating
and monitoring eight transfer stations, two rural drop boxes and a
regional landfill.
That’s a tall order, but don’t make the mistake of thinking the
SWD is only about garbage.
“We like to say it isn’t about trash, it is about environmental
stewardship,” Willis says, “And actually, it really is. We serve
more than 1,200,000 customers in the Greater Puget Sound
area through our programs and services. We run the transfer
stations and the landfill – processing over 950,000 tons of solid
waste per year – and we manage closed landfills. We also
create educational programs on waste reduction and recycling,
we offer online services including a recyclable materials
exchange service where people can find information on
eco-friendly building materials, and we work with other
government agencies to protect environmental quality.
Maximizing Value for Ratepayers
Protecting the environment is a key issue in the Pacific
Northwest, the SWD programs are critical to achieving
conservation goals. But building and maintaining a successful
Solid Waste infrastructure takes a solid network infrastructure.
And that means one that can handle traffic not only today, but
for years to come. In early 2003, it became clear to Willis that
the equipment installed in some of his remote offices wasn’t
going to handle the growth of those networks. Plus, the system
in the main SWD office, which now supported 210 workstations,
was aging, and beginning to outgrow its architecture.
Case Study:
King County Solid Waste Division
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Networking
King County Solid Waste Division transforms a simple equipment reshuffle
into a strategic network redesign, adding value and saving money for everyone.
Page 2 |Allied Telesis Case Study: King County Solid Waste www.alliedtelesis.com
Project Intelligent workgroup and backbone infrastructure
Scope 210 workgroup nodes and 12 application aggregation server
Challenge Consolidate and upgrade an existing Ethernet LAN on a shoestring budget
Critical Objectives Simplify network structure and improve system performance
PROFILE
King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, Wa

“Our network was seriously oversubscribed,” says Willis.“The
design we had was good enough for today, but as we add
computers and functions, it is getting slower and less reliable.
With a daisy-chained architecture, like we had, it was going to
be tough to take the network to the next level. So when we
needed to upgrade some of the equipment out at the Cedar
Hills facility, we decided to take the opportunity to streamline
and future-proof here in the central office. ”
Ken got right to work designing a solution. Foremost in his
mind was improving network performance expanding capacity
and maximizing accessibility. But they were also thinking of the
SWD strategic vision, which among other things seeks to max-
imize value for ratepayers through public sector efficiencies.
“In today’s environment, we have to be accountable for every
dime,” says Willis. “We look very hard at everything we do, and
try to do what’s right for the ratepayers. I always keep the
ratepayer’s point of view in mind – because I am one.”
Faced with finding a top performing, future-proofed solution at
a good price, the first phone call Ken made was to Keith
Hanna at Allied Telesis, Inc.
“Solid as Granite”
“I first used Allied Telesis in 1993,” says Willis. “And I’m
definitely a believer. In fact, there were suggestions that we go
with a Cisco system – the County offices use a lot of Cisco.
But if you compare the two products, Allied wins, hands-
down.”Why? “Allied Telesis products have equal or better
performance and a much better price,” he says, “And we’ve
had really phenomenal service and support.Whatever else we
did, I wanted to go with Allied Telesis products, if I could.”
So Ken spent some time with sales rep Keith Hanna, laying out
his network plans and requirements. Keith brought in Systems
Engineer Jason Patterson to analyze the existing network, and
create a design that would meet the SWD’s unique require-
ments.The first decision that needed to be made was how to
optimize the system to make the most of existing resources.
Patterson and Ken Willis sat down and drew up what the new
network would look like.
www.alliedtelesis.com Allied Telesis Case Study: King County Solid Waste |Page 3
Diagram 1: Before
Diagram 2:After

“Solid as Granite” continued
“It was a pretty simple solution, in the end,” says Patterson,“They
knew what they wanted to accomplish, so all we had to do was
match them up with the right equipment. We also wanted to
make sure they had some room for growth, and – because their
systems are really critical to their operation – we wanted to add
redundancy to make sure they stay available.”
They decided on the Allied Telesis AT-SB4000 series of products,
often known as SwitchBlade, which had the right combination of
wirespeed performance, port-density and redundancy features.
The 210 King County SWD workstations and dozen file servers,
which had previously been connected by a web of twelve
different hubs, would now be consolidated on one AT-SB4008
multi-layer switch. By centralizing the system at one core
connection point, they would simplify trouble-shooting, reduce
maintenance, and could more economically add the network
redundancy features they wanted.
Moreover, this design would free up that original networking hard-
ware for transport to the Cedar Hills facility and the remote
transfer stations – where they would be a better fit.Those remote
sites all link back to the main office over a Regional Optical
Network.
The AT-SB4008 chassis has eight slots for line cards, or “blades.”
Willis and Patterson decided to fully configure the chassis, choos-
ing five 10/100TX 48-port copper blades for the workgroups
along with two 8-port SC Gigabit fiber blades and an 8-port
Gigabit copper blade to connect their file servers.
“They’ve got 210 workstations and a dozen servers connected
right now,” says Keith Hanna, “but there’s room for 30 more
workstations and eleven more servers.
Plus, the SwitchBlade system is modular, so if they need to add
more capacity down the line, they can easily do that, and still keep
this centralized architecture.”
They also configured the chassis with three redundant power sup-
ply modules and a redundant Switch Controller management
card, to ensure that the system will maintain maximum availability,
and recover quickly from outages.
What about performance? The original network, Patterson
explains, was crippled by a daisy-chained architecture. “They were
only getting about 2.4 Gig per box on that network,” he says.“By
the time you got to the last one, the system was running up to 8
Gig of traffic – which is seriously oversubscribed.The Switchblade
will give them 100% throughput for every port on the network.”
The change-out itself went off without a hitch.Willis and his team
had the installation completed and the network back up and run-
ning inside of an hour.The Cedar Hills facility has seen a tenfold
increase in their performance, and the rest of the equipment will
be rolled out as the remote transfer stations are ready for them.
Ken Willis and his team are very pleased with their new network.
“It’s been as solid as a piece of granite,” he says.“It’s been terrific.
You know, when I first brought Allied Telesis in, there were
definitely nay-sayers, some people wanted to stick with the status
quo and really doubted my assessment of the performance
increase we could see. But when we fired that baby up and they
saw the performance for themselves… We’ll, let’s just say, there
are a few more believers here.”
Solution Design: Less is more
In this network revamp, the SWD main office systems were
streamlined into one modular AT-SB4008 Layer 3 switch chassis.
With its 8-slot configuration, the “SwitchBlade” AT-SB4008
was able to replace the twelve hubs previously employed. In
addition to improved speed and capacity, the AT-SB4008 also
adds intelligent network management, increased security
functions such as firewall and user authentication, hot-swappable
components, and power & intelligence redundancy to ensure
continuous availability for mission critical systems.
Page 4 |Allied Telesis Case Study: King County Solid Waste www.alliedtelesis.com

Use a chassis-based AT-SB4108 to collapse
existing multi-switch core environment.
This Layer 3 switch simplifies network architecture,
consolidates addresses from 8 to 1, reduces fiber and
copper Ethernet ports and improves overall system
performance.
Architecture
iNET – Intelligent Network Infrastructure from Allied Telesis
Capabilities
•Local Area Network
•Port Mirroring for Web Monitoring
Why Allied Telesis?
Ken Willis, SWD Information Systems Administrator has
been using Allied Telesis Equipment since 1993. “I’ve never
had a product fail me,” he says. He chose Allied Telesis
because he knew it would get the job done and be “solid
as granite.”
Key Factors
•Value
•Performance
•Dependability
Outcome
“There were definitely (people who) wanted to stick with the
status quo… Let’s just say, there are a few more believers
here.”
- Ken Willis, King County Solid Waste Division
Website
http://dnr.metrokc.gov/swd
THE SOLUTION DETAILS
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