Imagine.com - Network Design

Peter B. Bartram designed his first large campus network for United Technologies’s Pratt & Whitney’s East Hartford, Connecticut campus in 1990 which connected all the campus buildings, their IBM 3090 Mainframe, and the United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) with a TCP-IP Ethernet Backbone and set up Ethernet to Fiber to AT&T’s national backbone to connect to the network at Pratt & Whitney’s Florida campus. In the early days of Robert Metcalf’s 3COM Ethernet equipment and later with Cisco and other manufacturers, I began my career in networking before that time working and designing networks with the early networking for Desktop Publishing specfically with Apple’s AppleTalk Network Protocol and early AppleTalk to Ethernet TCP-IP Gateways like the Cayman GatorBox and the Kinetics FastPath LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge/router. In 1990, we joined the Internet with TCP-IP and received our first domain name using our NeXT Computers and one of the the first commercial ISPs. In 1995-2001, He designed, built, and managed what grew to become a Nationwide ISP with Cisco routers running the network with Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) Protocol. I used NeXT Computers for the ISP initially because we were a NeXT Authorized Reseller (Made by Steve Jobs’s NeXT Computer, Inc.). Our DNS servers and other servers would later migrate onto Sun UNIX computers. The World Wide Web was originally developed using NeXT Hardware and Software.

For network design for computers used for Desktop Publishing, I owned an Apple Authorized Value Added Reseller that built Publishing Systems networks for hundreds of customers (for small to Fortune 500 sized businesses) which were networks for the Apple Computers we sold them, often with a few HP or Dell PC Systems included in the Purchase. We continue this work today with Imagine.com Communications, Inc. and as an Authorized Reseller of Quark Software, Inc. This company was also the owner of the ISP mentioned above. [If Apple chose to reestablished their Apple VAR channel once again, we could sell Apple Computers instead of only recommending their configurations]

Since then, I have also been working on a side-project called the Imagine Network ISP Reference Architecture and the Imagine Wireless ISP Reference Architecture to prevent nationstate CyberAttacks.

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Today, we offer several types of network design services.

Although this list is not definitive, we break these down into a few different areas as follows:

Networks Design Services for Creative Content Development- We are providing network design services for mid to large business that are involved in Content Development. This could be a corporate creative services department, an Advertising Agency, a Magazine/Web Publication, or a large commerical printer with a large prepress department. In the future, we will be offering and supporting Quark Software’s Quark Content Enablement System which can span Departments so that the Network Design will incorporate this new technology platform. These network designs look at the number of the workstations, number of Tablets and Phones for testing website flex layouts, the range of output devices, Printer Output Queue Management for workstations and mobile devices, WiFi Access Points in the department and version 802.11 version support for the new Wifi 6, access to webservers, TV/Multimedia Departments, bandwidth requirements, corporate backbone connectivity, connections with corporate IT networks and access to services like email and file storage, and other requirements.

Network Design for Niche Corporate IT Networking- While a corporation may have a preferred outside vendor or contractor to support the Company’s main IT requirements, often there are niche corporate network, optical, or telecom assignments that can be outside of general corporate networking. We offer those niche network designs that integrate into the larger corporate headquarters networks and we will come in and evaluate the requirements and then make a proposal.

Network Design for upgrading a Corporate Headquarters Fiber Optic BackBone- We have designed Fiber Optic Corporate HQ Backbones in past years. We are now offering at 1, 10 and 100 Gigibit speed Fiber Links to remote headquarter switches on multimode and singlemode fiber (depending on the distance). These links will significantly improve the bandwidth and reliability of connections from the main datacenter out to switches all over the premises. Each remote switch should connect to two different switches in the Datacenter. We can run 12 strand fiber or 12 fiber ribbon cable and use Corning fiber modules to break out 10 Gigabit LC Connectors to fit Cisco SFP modules in these switches. These LCs connectors can be trunked together on a 4 Port-10 Gigabit Switch module to create higher bandwidth 20-40 Gig Links for higher bandwidth demands. If one uses the four port 10 Gigabit module on the remote department switch(s), one can have two fiber links at 10 Gigabit each to one core switch and two fiber links at 10 Gigabit to another core switch. This represents the use of 8 fibers or 4 fiber pairs which leaves 4 fibers as available cold spares. We have all the equipment necessary to terminate and splice fiber including four fusion splicers of different types. Now is the time to step up to higher bandwidth.

Network Design for Big Box Stores -We offer network designs for migrating from 1 Gigabit or Cat5/6 to higher speed 10-100 gigabit Fiber Optic links for the internal networks in Big Box stores. Many Big Box stores fiber links are at 1 Gigabit on OM1 fiber cable and don’t have a migration path to higher speeds or understand the impact of how much better the network would be at 10 times the bandwidth these greater speeds deliver, This would increase speeds for Customer Guest WiFi and make register transactions happen much faster. Everything connected in the stores would respond much faster. Often the original 1 Gigabit fiber links were installed with older fiber termination equipment and so fail with today’s 400 power fiber inspection microscopes and newer termination technology. We have several of these that work wirelessly by WiFi direct to an App on our IPads so we can immediately see how bad the problem is.

Speciality CAT6/6A Datacenter Links - We have Cat 6 and CAT6A RJ-45 connectors in shielded and unshielded variety. Therefore we can terminate for 10 Gigbit Copper onsite as well. We can make custom cables onsite in any length. We also can make our own patch cables onsite to the exact length required.