COMMENT
Modular fibre optic solutions Driving Down Ownership Costs By Peter Lascelles, Sales Manager EU,
m2fx.com
Peter Lascelles advocates the advantages of modular fibre optic physical media for all.
Organisations continually reach the capacity of their networks and are forced to make a decision: be operationally constrained, or upgrade. In the 1990s, network backbone capacity was a pedestrian 10Mb/s. Soon 100Gb/s will be a practical reality, a 10,000 fold increase. At each incremental step, 10Mb/s, 100Mb/s, 1Gb/s, 10Gb/s, people were heard to say “we will never need that much”. What we have learned is that we did need that capacity, and we still want much more. Organisations are forced on a continual upgrade path in order to remain efficient and compete in their markets. Although active equipment is
relatively straightforward to replace, physical media, the highway that data runs on, is more of a challenge. Replacing fibre optic backbone cable is often labour intensive and usually disruptive. Network designers and IT
professional are aware of this and try to get the best return on investment by specifying carefully at the design stage. But as technology improves, so the useful life of installed product
seems to be reducing. If you were to
install an OM4 fibre optic backbone today, how long will it remain useful?
Fibre Pathway Big infrastructure companies grew wise to this many years ago and developed modular physical media consisting of microducts and blown fibre. The microduct provides a pathway into which fibres are blown, pushed or pulled. This results in upgradable infrastructure that gets the best possible return on investment from the initial capital expenditure. Infrastructure companies capitalise
again and again by using microduct. Once microducts are installed they can be repeatedly re loaded with the fibre technology of the day. Fibre installed in a microduct can also be replaced easily to affect repair should the need arise. In contrast, when a traditional
cable is to be replaced its days of providing return on investment are over. The cost of removing the obsolete cable must also be considered.
In the past, special equipment and skills were needed to install
fibre into microducts. This is not necessarily the case these days. While fibre does need to be blown over long distances, it can be pushed, pulled or blown over the shorter distances typical of the campus LAN. This has made modular fibre optic solutions a practical option for smaller installation companies and IT departments. Microduct is installed in much the same way as an armoured cable. It is secured to tray, and building surfaces using standard fixings, and pushed or pulled through campus ducts. Once in situ, the fibre is pushed, pulled or blown into the duct and terminated as usual. When the fibre needs upgrading, it is pulled out of the microduct and discarded. New fibre is then installed, quickly and easily.
School’s Out Consider a large education establishment that installed a traditional fibre optic backbone infrastructure in 1998. It is likely that OM1 fibre would have been selected as this was the most capable, multimode product widely available at that time.
Desktop equipment would have been connecting at 10Mb/s and the backbone would probably have been served by 100Mb/s switches and hubs. As OM1 could support 1Gb/s over this campus, it would seem a sensible, future proof option. In reality, 10Gb/s came along in 2002, making this fictitious installation obsolete after only four years of service.
Organisations continually reach the capacity of their networks. 14 NETCOMMS europe Volume II Issue 4 2012
Had this same organisation installed a modular fibre optic backbone, they could have phased in inexpensive upgrades over a period of time and continued to benefit from the original capital expenditure to the present day and beyond. As an end note, the large telecommunications infrastructure companies have understood the advantages of modular fibre optic physical media for a long time and deploy it widely. Now the benefits are available to all.
www.netcommseurope.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60