In January of 1998, AT&T announced plans to build a state-of-the-art Global Network Operations Center (GNOC) in Bedminster, New Jersey. The international communications company stated that its objective for building the new facility was to "future proof" its network. Less than twenty-one months after ground was broken and at a cost of $91 million, that objective was met when the doors opened on the world-class command and control center.

AT&T's GNOC sits on a 200 acre campus an hour's drive from New York City. The operations center links 30 major metropolitan areas nationwide, serving roughly 80 million customers. The building, with its technology-infused infrastructure and unique architectural design, has few precedents. It covers four floors, two above ground and two below, for a total of 198,000 square feet of space.

Designing the Facility

Plans for the center were in the works for two years before ground was broken on the project. AT&T's objective for building the operations center was driving every design aspect for the facility from the get-go. The building itself would serve several different purposes. In addition to being the nerve center of AT&T's domestic communications network, the facility would also be something of an ambassador for AT&T. The GNOC would be a place where AT&T could bring customers to experience first-hand what the company does. It would also provide a site to demo new products and launch new programs. Making the building "future proof" had a couple of different meanings from a design perspective. One, the data infrastructure had to be capable of handling as efficiently as possible any type or volume of traffic customers could generate. And two, because of the building's ambassador status, its physical design had to be on the bleeding edge of communications technology.

The end result is the GNOC plays three roles: it's a world-class command and control center; it hosts an elaborate visitors' program; and it supports a well-equipped corporate briefing center. To conceptualize and design the telecomm and A/V solutions needed for this extensive project, AT&T contracted technology consultant firm Shen Milsom & Wilke.

World-Class A/V at the GNOC

The hub of the GNOC is the Operations Theater—a top-notch command and control center. Located 60 feet below ground on the floor of a three and a half story atrium, the Operations Theater is built on a gentle, 180 degree arc. (See Image 1.) Thirty-five control consoles face a wall of 141 rear projection screens stacked three high and 47 across.

Behind the scenes, LCD projectors illuminate the screens, which are fed by a 200 x 200 matrix switcher. Inputs to this switcher come from a number of different sources, including off-air television, direct satellite, broadcast news, weather stations, and AT&T's network monitoring system, which relies on 150-plus high resolution computer workstations. (See Image 2.)

The Operations Theater also plays a central role in the visitors' program. Visitors enter the building on the third floor and are led into a theater room. They are invited to sit in one of thirty comfortable seats facing a curved projection screen (8 ft. x 28 ft.) mounted on a 13 ft. x 50 ft. wall and watch a seven-minute presentation. The presentation runs off an SGI Onyx II computer and is choreographed to music. Three, high-brightness DLP projectors are blended together to provide a solid image on the large screen (See Image 3.). At the end of the presentation, the screen and the wall on which it's mounted are lifted quickly and silently into the ceiling, and visitors are suddenly looking through a bank of windows down at the Operations Theater 60 feet below.

Directly across from this Visitors' Observation Theater is another wallboard with 39 LCD projectors arranged in a 3 x 13 array. This display wall is fed from a video server and can also access sources from other areas of the GNOC. The wallboard is used for presentations and videoconferencing environments.

The Corporate Briefing Center was also designed to be on the cutting edge of A/V technology. It includes five briefing rooms and a product demonstration room. A master control room houses a variety of A/V equipment that is accessible to every room through a control system. Each room is equipped with a rear-screen projector, audio, videoconferencing equipment, and electronic whiteboards.

Making It Work—With Room to Grow

One big issue Shen Milsom & Wilke ran into when designing AT&T's GNOC was simply the mammoth size of the project. The magnitude of the A/V program meant a huge amount of cabling was necessary to make it all work. Huge amounts of cable influenced the install in two main ways: cost and weight.

"Keeping in mind that we were dealing with 200 inputs and 200 outputs, cable cost was a significant issue due to the size of the switch," explains Steve Emspak, Principal with Shen Milsom & Wilke, who worked extensively on the project. "Cable density also became an issue when we realized that [because of the sheer magnitude of the installation] we had a significant amount of weight invested in the cables." Cable weight affects both the time and labor it takes to physically build an application, as well as potentially affecting the structural integrity of the building itself.

Emspak began looking for a way to cut down the number of cables he needed without affecting the signal quality of the install. His solution was to use 180 Extron SS 200 sync stabilizers directly in front of all LCD projectors—141 in the Operations Theater and 39 on the wallboard opposite the Visitors' Observation Theater.

The Extron SS 200 is a sync stabilizer that accepts RGBHV, RGBS, or RGsB and, utilizing a method exclusive to Extron, digitally restores the sync, providing a stabilized RGBS or RGBHV output signal. The SS 200 outputs simultaneously on five BNCs and a female 15-pin HD connector, so output can be sent directly to the projector no matter what type of input it has.

Using the SS 200, Emspak ran an RGsB video signal on three wires into and out of the 200 x 200 matrix switcher. He placed an SS 200 in front of each digital display and converted the RGsB to RGBHV, making a short, five-wire cable run directly into the projector. This technique let Emspak spec smaller, lighter cabling for the majority of the long cable runs throughout the GNOC.

"Using the SS 200s let Shen Milsom & Wilke deliver a more cost-effective systems design to our client," says Emspak. "The benefits appeared in a couple of areas." Running three-wire cable into and out of the switcher cut the cost and the labor expense. Using these sync stabilizers also meant Emspak could spec a three-level (RGB) matrix switcher instead of a four or five level switcher—enabling even more cost savings. Additionally, the SS 200s reduced the number of cables used from 6,000 to 4,000. This cut down the weight of the cable runs, as well as the number of equipment racks in the computer room, leaving room for future expansion. (See Image 4.)

Emspak was so pleased with the impact the SS 200s had on the AT&T install that he's used them to accomplish similar goals in other locations. "Since using the SS 200s for AT&T, we have had similar success with them where we needed to provide our clients with advanced A/V capabilities confined within a pre-existing infrastructure with limited conduit capacity," he says.

Today, the GNOC is on the leading edge of A/V technology. The SS 200s have helped make AT&T's Global Network Operations Center ready for the systems of tomorrow by leaving plenty of room to grow.