Mirage Resorts has built its $1.5-billion business on attention to detail and guest amenities. It dominates the glittery Las Vegas Strip with elegant, full-service resorts that offer casino excitement and lavish accommodations. Its flagship resort, The Mirage, ranks first in operating income in Nevada, and the nearby Treasure Island is also a top-producing resort. The company also owns the Golden Nugget, the largest property in downtown Las Vegas. Mirage Resorts recently added a fourth property to its Las Vegas portfolio with the opening of Bellagio, a spectacular $1.6 billion resort overlooking an eight-acre lake, with romantic vistas of an Italian villa, a botanical conservatory and a fine-art gallery of major works by such masters as Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet.

By applying the same attention to detail to its network architecture, Mirage Resorts has hit the jackpot in business benefits and guest services. As Bellagio opened its doors, the resort's data center flipped the switch on a $2 million LAN that allows the sprawling facility to expedite business operations around the clock. Not only does the 3Com network serve accounting and human resources functions, it also processes restaurant, retail and entertainment transactions and enables the company to track every wager and payoff for all 2,700 slot machines that fill the Bellagio's casino floor. The network additionally expedites Bellagio's use of business-critical applications such as Baan Company's financial software and AS400-based services, including Stratton Warren's inventory management program and FileNET's integrated document management (IDM) software imaging system for employee records and medical benefits claims. The network's fully redundant design means that if the ATM backbone fails, the Bellagio LAN will continue to operate at Ethernet speeds.

Mirage Resorts' 3Com ATM MAN connects Bellagio and its three other Las Vegas properties so that all four facilities can share enterprise-wide financial, inventory and personnel functions that run on 3Com network systems. "Once a casino opens, it never closes. 3Com's network architecture gives us the solid foundation we need to keep our properties running 24 hours a day," said Glenn Bonner, chief information officer for Mirage Resorts. "As we upgrade the LANs at each of our other properties, we'll rely on the scalability of the CoreBuilder 7000 switch to grow with our network."

A Network Vision That's a Sure Bet

Mirage Resorts' network architecture is as visionary as its concept of expansive, full-service casino resorts. A longtime 3Com user, the company employs a 3Com Ethernet/FDDI LAN at The Mirage, Treasure Island and the Golden Nugget. Previously, leased fiber connections provided 100 megabits per second (Mbps) FDDI connections to each property. However, plans to build Bellagio, coupled with the saturation of the FDDI network, presented Mirage Resorts with an opportunity to make a dramatic entry into advanced high-bandwidth networking. By implementing ATM technology for the new resort's LAN and MAN, Mirage Resorts saw networking as a means to operate more efficiently and keep pace with the company's rapid business expansion.

The company approached 3Com for a scalable ATM infrastructure capable of satisfying the resorts' short-term needs and long-term growth. It chose 3Com based on the breadth of the vendor's overall solution, its proven performance and its 3Com Care(sm) professional services, which provides network installation, design, configuration and performance checks. "3Com has been a solid partner for us for years," said Frank Ascolese, network engineering manager for Mirage Resorts. "We believed 3Com's superior ATM solutions would give us the networking power we need, and their project management and service would ensure the highest possible performance."

The 3Com Bellagio LAN is based on five CoreBuilder 7000 ATM/Fast-Ethernet chassis switches at its core. The CoreBuilder 7000 switches provide 155 Mbps OC-3 ATM connections to five CoreBuilder 3500 Layer 3 switches and 70 SuperStack(R) II Switch 3000s in Bellagio's data center and wiring closets. The Layer 3 switches deliver Fast Ethernet connections to 63 Dell servers and are being used to create virtual LANs, which help segment traffic in the hotel's thin-client architecture. The CoreBuilder 3500 systems also run the resort's video and slot machines on a separate 100 Mbps fiber-based network and have redundant Fast Ethernet links to the SuperStack II Switch 3000s. The SuperStack II Switch 3000s have Fast Ethernet links to SuperStack II 1100 workgroup Ethernet switches, which distribute switched 10 Mbps Ethernet connections to PCs and windows-based terminals. Bellagio is also using 3Com Fast EtherLink(R) 10/100 network interface cards (NICs) in its servers and PCs.

Mirage Resorts will soon complete its installation of CoreBuilder 7000 switches at The Mirage, Treasure Island, and Golden Nugget data centers to replace the Ethernet-to-FDDI ring and to create an OC-3 MAN. The new MAN will provide faster, more efficient use of financial, human resources and other business-critical network services. "We're going to be able to manage our computer-based resources more effectively," said Bonner. "The MAN is also significantly reducing our hardware management costs by allowing us to centrally manage our Tandem, AS/400 and NT-based systems."

The PathBuilder S600 switches at The Mirage and Bellagio provide redundant 1.54 Mbps T-1 connectivity to Mirage Resorts' newest property, Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi. When it opens in the March of 1999, Beau Rivage will introduce luxury accommodations to the Gulf coast with a 2,000-room resort that mixes Southern hospitality and Mirage Resorts' quality. The PathBuilder S600 systems' scalability gives Mirage Resorts the option to upgrade to OC-3 once network traffic at Beau Rivage warrants it.

Mirage Resorts is further boosting network reliability with 3Com's Transcend(R) Enterprise Manager. The network management application lets the company monitor LAN performance and isolate troubleshooting issues from a single management console. 3Com's Guardian (sm) service contract deploys an onsite engineer at Mirage Resorts and includes a four-hour spare part replacement service, 24-hour by 7-day response, free software upgrades, and advanced hardware replacement.

Mirage Resorts' network strategy ensures that the company can focus confidently on its expansion plans, which it is aggressively pursuing. In addition to the Beau Rivage, Mirage Resorts is currently constructing the company's first hotel and casino in Atlantic City, where it may also deploy a 3Com network. "3Com is giving us an architecture we can use when and where we need it to support our growth," concluded Bonner.

About 3Com

With more than 200 million customers worldwide, 3Com Corporation connects more people to information in more ways than any other networking company. 3Com delivers innovative information access products and network system solutions to large, medium and small enterprises; carriers and network service providers; PC OEMs; and consumers. 3Com. More connected(TM). For further information, visit 3Com's World Wide Web site at www.3com.com or the press site at www.3com.com/pressbox.

3Com, 3Care, Transcend, EtherLink, CoreBuilder and SuperStack are registered trademarks of 3Com Corporation. PathBuilder and More connected. are trademarks and Guardian and 3Com Care are service marks of 3Com Corporation. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.