What to do if your LAN isn´t fast enough

The medical industry is a fine example of the trend of increasing resolution and volume of images being handled by off-the-shelf technology from the computer industry. In the last dozen years multiple non-invasive imaging technologies have come into widespread use in medical facilities around the world-computer aided tomography (CT) scan, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), digital radiology (DR), and computer radiology (CR). Using either SCSI, or the new SCSI derivative-Fibre Channel-a new kind of network can be built that connects multiple computers directly to storage. Connection devices similar to the ones used on the LAN-routers, hubs, bridges, and switches-allow this storage area network, or SAN, to scale up in size just as LANs can scale up. But the advantage of course, is that the SAN is much more efficient at moving large quantities of data very quickly. Just as the computers connected to a LAN originally needed a network operating system, or NOS, computers now connected to a SAN need a storage area network operating system, or SAN-OS, to allow multiple computers to all coexist peacefully on the SAN with no data corruption. SANergy^TM from Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. is the world´s first SAN-OS