Implementation of an open systems network

NEI Parsons is a £100 million/annum turnover business, employing 2000 people across a site of approximately 4000 acres. The company´s main business is the design, manufacture, site installation and after-sales servicing of steam turbine plant, combined gas/steam cycle plant and power generators for the world market. The mainframe facility has been closed down and a three year facility management contract taken out to support those mainframe operations from a remote site. Mainframe applications are to be migrated onto a distributed network of workstations, servers and PCs. The first stage of this exercise is the creation of a company-wide local area network. The wiring strategy and the protocol strategy are discussed