79 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
79 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
ISDN
|
|
|
|
HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL INSTALLS ISDN-BASED DEBIT CARD SYSTEM
|
|
|
|
Students pay up front, then monitor accounts during the school year
|
|
|
|
Harvard University Medical School in Boston is living proof that we
|
|
have come a long way from lunch tickets. The prestigious school is
|
|
using a simple but efficient ISDN-based debit card system that
|
|
allows students to eat with a swipe of plastic.
|
|
|
|
The current debit card system is actually an enhanced successor to
|
|
an earlier paper-based system that also allowed students to pay for
|
|
meals ahead of time. However, this predecessor system required
|
|
students to present paper coupons when entering one of the two
|
|
medical school cafeterias.
|
|
|
|
The thousands of paper coupons were then sent to the Vanderbilt Hall
|
|
Student Services Group, where, at the end of each month, they were
|
|
manually tabulated so student and food vendor accounts could be
|
|
updated. The idea was good, but the execution was labor-intensive
|
|
and lacked efficiency.
|
|
|
|
Yvonne Geeve is general manager of Harvard Medical School's
|
|
Vanderbilt Hall, the Housing and Residence Life Center on campus
|
|
which administers the program. She worked with the old system and
|
|
greatly prefers the new version. She believes students feel the same
|
|
way.
|
|
|
|
"Students carry the cards instead of coupons or cash, and they
|
|
can keep daily track of their accounts," she notes. "They spend the
|
|
money up front for making purchases around campus or for using
|
|
services on campus, and at the end of the year they have an account
|
|
of what they used. They are also able to receive a refund for unused
|
|
services."
|
|
|
|
In an effort to update the old system, Harvard contracted with
|
|
Griffin Technologies, which installed a debit card system that
|
|
called for a card reader at each of the cafeterias and a small
|
|
mainframe computer at Vanderbilt Hall.
|
|
|
|
Now, instead of submitting the paper coupons, student diners merely
|
|
swipe their debit cards through the card readers, which query the
|
|
nearby mainframe concerning the account in question. If the account
|
|
is paid up, then the mainframe flashes an approval along with
|
|
current account information back to the cardreader in a visual
|
|
readout. The student's purchase is then approved.
|
|
|
|
New England Telephone helped enable the system by adding an RS-232
|
|
connection to the card readers, converting the transactions to
|
|
packet data and then routing them via permanent virtual circuits
|
|
over a "D" channel of Harvard Medical School's existing voice-based
|
|
ISDN network. Actually, the application only requires 2,400 bps
|
|
worth of bandwidth on a 9,600 bps channel.
|
|
|
|
Because redundancy was built into the system, all cafeterias may
|
|
transmit simultaneously over separate circuits. And because the "D"
|
|
channel is not fully utilized, there is enough remaining bandwidth
|
|
to retain that redundancy, even if more locations are added.
|
|
|
|
This technical work was accomplished in a day. It took about two
|
|
more weeks for Griffin Technologies _ working with the New England
|
|
Telephone Data Technical Support Group _ to develop compatible
|
|
hardware and software for the Vanderbilt Hall mainframe.
|
|
|
|
This service, although not technologically complex, underscores the
|
|
flexibility of ISDN. In this case, it allowed packet data to be
|
|
transmitted over a voice network. Harvard has also used ISDN for
|
|
video conferencing.
|
|
|
|
The success of the debit card system has encouraged Harvard to
|
|
consider deploying it throughout the university's main campus in
|
|
Cambridge. Beyond that, other possible future applications include
|
|
using the debit card for entry to restricted areas, as well as for
|
|
vending, laundry and entertainment services.
|
|
|
|
|