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The paper presents a situation of planning a Wide Area Network (WAN) in technical education campus of Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, Rajasthan, India. The aim of the project is to provide net access to around 3500 students and 600 staff’s quarters.

The project aims at providing net access to all rooms by WAN. The cables used are the outdoor fiber and indoor copper cable. The basic plan is to take the outdoor fiber from a core (master) switch to a distribution switch from where the access switch can cater to the rooms using indoor copper cables .The number of distribution, access switch varies depending on the need. The project aims to find an optimum path for both the fiber and indoor copper cables and hence reduce the cost

Network analyst and shortest path analysis are used to find the optimum path for the cables so as to reduce the cost. Various constraints are taken care when using cables and few are mentioned before. We have used ARC VIEW GIS version 3.1 for the whole analysis and AUTOCAD RELEASE14 and AUTOCAD 2000 for creating images of the campus and hostels.

Introduction
A network is a line coverage that is topology based and consists of connected linear features. A communication network, in its simplest form, is a set of equipment and facilities that provides as service: the transfer of information between the users located at various geographical points. Internet or inter network is no exception to this, which involves the interconnection of multiple networks into a single large area network. Today GIS is used extensively to plan, build and operate communication networks and associated services. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computer system for capturing, storing, querying, analyzing and displaying geographic data. Maps have been used for thousands of years, but it is only within the last few decades that the technology has existed to combine maps with computer graphics and databases to create geographic information systems or GIS. What distinguishes GIS from other forms of information systems, such as databases and spreadsheets, is that GIS deals with spatial information. GIS has the capability to relate layers of data for the same points in space, combining, analyzing and, finally, mapping out the results. Spatial information uses location, within a coordinate system, as its reference base. The most common representation of spatial information is a map on which the location of any point could be given using latitude and longitude, or local grid references.

GIS can handle complex network problems, such as road network analysis. There are, of course, other types of network analysis, involving stream networks. For example, GIS could be used to model the flow of water through a river system, to plan a flood warning system, to plan sewer and water pipe lines etc. In broad terms, a Geographic Information System could be defined as a set of principles and techniques employed to achieve one (or both) of the following objectives:

• Finding suitable locations that have the relevant attributes. For example, finding a suitable location where an airport, a commercial forest or a retail outlet can be established. This is usually achieved through the use of Boolean (logical) operations.
• Querying the geographical attributes of a specified location. For example, examining the roads in a particular locality, to check road density or find the shortest path, and so on. This is often achieved by ‘clicking’ onto the location or object of interest, and examining the contents of the database for that location or object.

Shortest path analysis finds the path with the minimum cumulative impedance between nodes on a network. The path may connect just two nodes – the origin and destination –or have specific stops between the nodes. It is based on a network with the objective of finding the path with the minimum cumulative cost in either time or distance between points on the network. It can help a traveler plan a trip; a van driver can set up a schedule for dozens of deliveries, or an emergency service to connect a dispatch station, accident location, and hospital. The network we are dealing with is the WAN using cable which is analogous to the road network. However the cable networks are quite different as many salient features are to be taken into consideration. These can be

• Need of detailed information of not only topography but also interior of the buildings.
• Cable laying is normally performed at the different elevations. Hence the need of integration and information of details at different elevations is necessary.
• More number of alternatives as compared to the other networks.
• More number of constraints
  • Maximum length between the switch to a user is 90m.
  • Fiber cables should be mainly underground.
  • Trenching involves labour cost, so trenching should be minimized.
  • Cost directly proportional to length of the cable.
  • Future plans have to be kept in mind.
• More number of components is involved; switch size, cable size etc…

Due to the aforesaid factors the analysis of cable networks is difficult and need spatial and non spatial information. Hence GIS which is capable of handling both types of information is most suitable tool for such problems. The software that we have used here is ARC VIEW 3.1.