Hardware Selection 

So we can just plug in some network equipment, connect the slot machines and servers and deploy "server-based gaming", right? 

Ask yourself: 

• "How important is it that the network be operational at 7am?  5pm? 10pm?" 
  
• "What are the consequences and effects of a wide-spread network failure at say, 10pm on Friday night?" 
  
• "What happens to progressive slot systems which use the network for communication if there is a network failure?" 
  
• "How much revenue is lost if a bank of popular and well-placed slots were to fail and stay down for an extended period?  4 hrs?  12 hrs?"     

 These questions highlight the impact a network failure could have on a server-based gaming casino floor.  Several years ago, while working for Aristocrat Technologies, I asked myself some of these same questions while developing the Aristocrat recommendations for building ethernet casino floor networks to support the Aristocrat Sentinel 3 player tracking system EGM monitor device and to support server-based gaming or "downloadables", as they are sometimes called.  Aristocrat refined these over the years and provides their recommendations to customers if you ask for them. I expect that IGT, Bally Technologies and some of the others do as well.

My recommendation is to build casino floor networks using Cisco equipment, and use Layer 3 access switches (3560 or better) as bank switches, building a Layer 3 routed network design.  I'll get into the particulars in a later section, but suffice it to say:  You want to build a converged network on the casino floor, right?  One that can support server-based gaming, player tracking and slot accounting systems, TITO, IP telephony, IP video surveillance, and potentially wireless gaming and wireless guest access, not to mention future cashless kiosk machines, all on a single network?

Impossible you say?   No, very possible, and able to comply with regulatory compliance segmentation requirements while sharing a common physical network.  This is the power of the so-called Network Virtuailization  effort on the part of Cisco and some otehr vendors (notably Juniper's Infranet initiative). 

As a casino operator, what sort of network hardware vendor would you want to bet your business on?  The network vendor that spends $3B (that's billion with a B) on R&D, or the one that spends $2M?  The one whose main focus is building server hardware?  The one whose main  customer market is home-users?  The one with hundreds of thousands of network engineers skilled in use of their products?  Or the vendor that has maybe a few hundred?   Does this lack of traned personnel mean the products are bad?  No, but it does mean that it could cost your business more to support a network  if you have trouble finding personnel trained on the equipment.   What's the ROI on network hardware replaced early for lack of features to build the converged network described above?

GSA Network Wiring Suggestions 

The GSA recently released their  "GSA Network Wiring Suggestions for Implementing G2S v1.0 ", dated 11/07/2007.  While I think it is a good start, I believe that the recommendations fall short of what is needed in the long term.

 What's Missing from the GSA's Recommendations or what should be changed?

• No mention of critical network and security management capabilities... NTP, AAA via RADIUS/TACACS+,  SSHv2 in-band CLI access, SNMP status monitoring, central syslog, central configuration change management and audit capabilities, configuration archive
• Document title is GSA Network Wiring Suggestions, however, the document delves into firewalls, IPS, multicast routing 802.1x in addition to discussing cabling, yet it stops short of providing the whole network and security management picture.
• TACACS+ should be recommended as the sole or preferred administrative Authntication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) protocol for network equpment... TACACS+ provides an audit trail or who did what when, in addition to the authentication of username/password that RADIUS and LDAP-based AAA may do.  Most network equipment supports TACACS+ and RADIUS, yet relatively little supports LDAP.  The bottom line is that TACACS+ provides a central AAA system which provides an audit trail and may replicate between geophratically dispersed AAA servers... try that with MS AD-based IAS RADIUS servers
• Fiber distances are misleading... the distance overwhich communication via fiber works is highly dependent upon the  core size and modal bandwidth of the fiber and the operating wavelength of the fiber optic module (GBIC or SFP).  Compare the distance for 62.5 micron 160 Mhz/km 850nm   to the distance using LX/LH SFP modules... LX/LH modules are of course more than double the price of SX modules.

Here is some information from:   http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/modules/ps5455/ps6577/product_data_sheet0900aecd8033f885.html

•  No discussion of 10Gbps.  10Gbps Fiber?   yes... any network which converges multiple applications such as VoIP, server-based gaming, video signage, streaming video-on-demand, and IP Video surveillance will be congesting uplinks, particularly when doing very high-quality video surveillance over the WAN.    Couldn't we just bundle multiple 1Gbps interface into a port-channel bundle?   yes, HOWEVER,   four 1Gbps in a port-channel bundle is not the same as 4 Gbps... the port-channel load-balancing algorithm does a sort of round-robin of flows on the links in the bundle, so the maximum a flow may use is 1Gbps.  In larger layer 2 access-based networks, spanning tree logical ports due to number of trunks and numbers of vlans  could become a critical issue.
• 10Gbps  should probably be discussed and recommended...   Cabling is capital infrastructure improvement which must be depreciated over a relatively long cycle... 5-7 years or more... With this sort of life, longevity and ROI is likely as important as initial capital cost.
• 10Gbps distances are shorter than 1Gbps on the same fiber...  see the chart below from:

 http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/modules/ps5455/ps6574/product_data_sheet0900aecd801f92aa.html

Table 1. X2 Port Cabling Specifications