Networking

The Building of nyu.florence.it

Carlo Cernivani

La Pietra is a 57-acre estate located in northern Florence. The property was bequeathed to NYU several years ago by Sir Harold Acton. The estate is made up of five villas, the most renowned of which is Villa La Pietra. The former private residence of Sir Acton is also home to a huge array of artwork and furnishings that make the Villa a landmark.

Jimmy Kyriannis (ACF's Associate Network Manager) and I were given the task of providing Internet connectivity to the administrators and students living and working in this timeless setting.

In addition to Villa La Pietra, we would also be working at Villa Natalia. Natalia is being used as a residence for NYU students studying in Florence. These students currently have access to a small computer lab, where they have six PCs that run Windows95. Before this project, their only link to the electronic world was through a single 28800 bps modem, attached to a proxy server that provides connectivity to an Internet Service Provider.

In the first phase of the project, we ordered and had delivered to us here in New York all of the hardware that we would be deploying at La Pietra. We purchased a Cisco 2514 router through which the estate would make its connection to the Internet, via the University of Florence (Universitá degli Studi di Firenze). That connection was to run over a dedicated two-megabit circuit, known as an E1, to another Cisco router located at the University of Florence.

We wanted to install a system at La Pietra that would provide e-mail, bootp/DHCP, Domain Name Service and web server capabilities. We acquired a Digital AlphaStation 200, running Digital Unix V4.0, for this purpose. The PC systems located at Villa La Pietra and Villa Natalia would gain network access via a pair of Asante 16-port intelligent hubs. Finally, we acquired C-Spec Corporation Overlan Wireless Bridge/IP routers to provide us the wireless connectivity that would link the student lab at Natalia to the main site at La Pietra. The speed of the wireless link would be two megabits per second, transmitted on a frequency of 915 Mhz.

While still in New York, we configured all of the equipment and ran tests over several days to ensure that all of the components and spare units were working properly. Satisfied that everything would work, we packed up the equipment and sent nine boxes of gear on ahead of us to Italy.

Once we were at Villa La Pietra and had unpacked our equipment, the first order of business was to get the router up and running over the dedicated circuit. After some difficulties, attributed to outdated software running on the router at the University of Florence, the connection was made and we had full Internet access. The next step was to put the Digital AlphaStation online. Once we made some minor configuration changes, the system was ready to go into a production mode where all of its critical services (DNS, bootp/DHCP, web server, POP server, etc.) were up and running. The system, named lapietra.nyu.florence.it, was officially on the Internet.

The wireless component of our installation came next. For me, this was the most fun. While Jimmy was safely ensconced on the ground floor where the bridge was located, I gingerly walked across the fragile slanted roof of Villa La Pietra to where our antenna was mounted on a mast. We communicated with walkie-talkies as we fine-tuned to obtain the best possible line of sight over to Villa Natalia, which is located about 500 yards from La Pietra.

Our next job was to set up our equipment at Villa Natalia. We headed over there with a wireless bridge, hub, cables and laptops to perform configuration work and testing. The link came up flawlessly and we could interface with the objects on La Pietra's network immediately. After some minor repositioning of the directional antenna, we were able to achieve an excellent signal strength, thus ensuring us a solid two-megabit link.

Once the bridges were up and running, we went about verifying that the PCs used in the student lab were properly registered in the bootp/DHCP server lapietra. All of the systems booted correctly over the wireless link and were ready for wireless access to the Internet. Systems used by the administrative staff in Villa La Pietra were also registered and, luckily, were able to use data wiring provided when the in-house phone system had been installed some time earlier.

Computer usage at La Pietra focuses on the basics: e-mail, word processing and World Wide Web access. Students rely heavily on e-mail to keep in contact with family and friends back in the States. Administrators rely on e-mail to conduct the day-to-day business of the estate by interfacing with administration and faculty here in New York. Everyone at the estate currently has access to an Internet Service Provider for e-mail and web access. The AlphaStation will eliminate the need for modems and the ISP by providing e-mail services to everyone locally at the estate. Its users will surely be pleased with the rapid response the AlphaStation will provide when they're sending or retrieving e-mail messages.

Web access will now be far less painful. All the student machines had web browsers configured to run in a non-graphical mode, since the speed of the communications link was so slow. Waiting for images to download was completely out of the question. We have now set all the systems up to allow graphical Web presentations. Although the browsers are not as responsive as we're accustomed to back home, we found it more than tolerable.

Full migration to the new network will not be completed until the beginning of the Spring '98 semester. There are plans to provide additional computers in the student lab, and the renovation of an adjacent lounge will provide even more space for systems to be installed.

Our work, however, is not done. Another villa on the property, Villa Coletta, is slated to be renovated and will provide additional housing for visiting students. The project will equip the rooms with data wiring comparable to what is found in our dorms here in New York. There are also plans to link up the five villas with fiber optic wiring. We will be re-engineering the network topology to take advantage of this resource and keep up with the growing needs of our Florentine colleagues and students.

Carlo and Jimmy would like to thank ...

Posted January 20, 1998