Australian Centre for the Moving Image introduces interactive artwork display

ACMI, located in the newly opened, ultra modern Federation Square in Melbourne, requires the LAN to stream digitised video from central servers for between 40 to 50 Plasma screens, LCD screens and LCD projectors located around the facility. The new network will enable the interactive multimedia spaces to come to life, offering a unique range of hands-on production, education and entertainment experiences for all ages.

NetStar met these requirements with a LAN that also supports traditional back office traffic such as email, file sharing and a media design studio. In doing so, it met the primary design goal which was to ensure that the streamed video traffic was able to traverse the network with the least amount of delay regardless of the traffic from other sources.

David Watson, Technology Manager, ACMI outlined how the new network will benefit visitors, both in person and online. He said: “This new form of artwork display, and the reliability that NetStar has brought to it, will allow visitors to the ACMI to gain a more interactive and unique experience from their visit. Not only will they have online access to the images, but they will be able to call up relevant information regarding individual artworks throughout the centre.

“NetStar is highly regarded within the industry and the concepts they outlined in the tender process made them the most favourable choice. They met every ACMI requirement and did so at a cost effective price”.

To meet the high performance, strict quality of service and high redundancy the project required, a network centred around four Cisco Catalyst 6500’s was deployed. Two 6513’s with switch fabric modules and two 6509’s form the core of this network. Each of these switches is interconnected via four Gigabit Ethernet links configured in a channel, to provide up to 4Gbps throughput. The switch fabric modules enable a 256 Gbps backplane speed in the 6513 switches. This will provide enough network capacity for many years to come.

At the edge of the network, a variety of Cisco Catalyst 3512’s, 24’s and 48’s have been deployed to provide 10/100Mbps connectivity. A Catalyst 4006 is used in the media design studio to provide higher density Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in a local area. As the network is being used to display pieces of artwork seven days a week, 12 hours a day, it needs a high level of redundancy. Redundancy is achieved with the four core Cisco 6500 catalyst switches. Should one fail, the network will continue to function with almost no impact to end users or devices. Each of the edge switches is dual connected back to a different 6500 chassis, providing path redundancy should one of the core devices fail. Whilst the edge switches are not redundant, only a limited number of critical devices are connected to each one, thus limiting the failure domain.

ABOUT NETSTARLOGICALIS

NetstarLogicalis is part of the Logicalis Group, which is a division of Datatec Limited (DTC), a $4.2 billion multi-national Group listed on the AIM market of the LSE and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. NetstarLogicalis offers a complete range of end-to-end solutions for converged data, security and Data Centre infrastructure. NetstarLogicalis’ state-of-the-art network management facilities help customers reduce the cost of managing their infrastructure. Our goal is to help customers better run their business, leveraging our proven networking and Data Centre expertise and experience.

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