a pitch. Food-service employees simply punch orders into Remanco Metropolitan's handheld terminals. Upon payment, the order prints in the kitchen and food is ready for delivery in less than two minutes.

This easy flow of tasks is deceiving. Owen John Smith, Remanco's general manager, cites the annual 50 percent staff turnover and the limited three-hour service operation--just the length of the ball game--as major challenges in running the network. "We're hiring and training new staf f members every year," he explains. Smith's concern about the limited service time is negligible most of the time because his customized operation is "customer-maintained even at the most cr itical point, with the exception of the rare PC bre akdown."

Smith explains that the network begins on an SCO Unix server with a point-of-sale application that collects data in a relational database management system (DBMS). Smith chose an external network to avoid excessive downtime during games. "In a lot of 24-hour environments, such as hotels, when you need to replace an internal card, you need to shut down the operation for a period of time," he says. An external network offers more flexibility. Remanco uses a credit-card modem for authorization. If it malfunctions, only the modem needs to be replaced, thus isolating the problem.

Fourteen network connections stadiumwide link three radio base stations/transmitters, 10 remote printers and one touch screen terminal. Cabling redundancy is provided with two cables for the f our printers. The touch-screen terminal keeps track of incoming and outgoing transactions from the servers and runners, and records employee work hours.

Radio transmitters connected to the network communicate with 12 handheld devices on the third-base, home-plate and first-base sides. Each transmitter uses a different frequency and the handhelds are interspersed around these locations so as not to completely block out a section. Transmitters and controllers are linked through phone RJ-12 connections.

There are no plans right now for expanding this program because space is limited at Yankee Stadium, according to Justin Babula, Remanco's MVP manager. "We've already built a kitchen at the Stadium Club and more ticket booths. There's just not a lot of room for expansion right now at this location."