INTELLIGENT CABLING
Fibre to
the Office,
tomorrow’s
network
backbone
Significant benefits of Fibre to the Office,
in terms of cost and energy saving and
reduction of installation times, are making
it the preferred network technology in large
scale roll outs, explains Tarek Helmy at
Nexans Cabling Solutions.
T
he number of applications running
on networks, and therefore
required IP convergence, keeps
increasing each year. Fibre to the Office
provides an ideal basis for the growing
flexibility needs of today’s buildings.
A Fibre to the Office approach to in-
building or on-site networks can fulfil
current requirements in the areas of
flexibility, cost-efficiency and network
interoperability. It also adds all the
practical advantages of fibre - the most
suitable medium for accommodating
the scalable infrastructure required to
guarantee network performance and host
current and future applications.
How does Fibre to the Office work?
Essentially, fibre is laid up to the connection
point, where intelligent media conversion
from copper to fibre takes place and ports
can be multiplied through cascading
adjacent ports. This type of centralised
structure greatly simplifies network service
and significantly reduces service costs.
Fibre optics
Fibre optic technology is immune
to electromagnetic interference and
30
Tarek Helmy, Regional Director Gulf and Middle East, South and East
Africa, Nexans Cabling Solutions.
has practically no length limitations.
Therefore, significant distances in
buildings, on campuses or even across
industrial sites are not a problem. With
copper, distances are limited to 100 metres
horizontal, but with a fibre solution,
distances of 550 metres and more can be
bridged. This means floor distributors
Datacentres
have a different
approach in
design and
implementation
when compared
to a normal
infrastructure of
a LAN.
between the central building distributor
and user ports are no longer necessary.
FTTO switches are directly connected
to the central building distributor,
requiring only an absolute minimum of
wiring cabinets and only core switches.
This means lower requirements in the area
of space, energy, cooling and maintenance
and related hardware.
Datacentres have a different approach
in design and implementation when
compared to a normal infrastructure
of a LAN. In datacentres, the main
requirements are high-speed links with
condensed number of terminations. The
uptake is happening in the datacentre
space where fibre cabling has become a
vital part of the infrastructure.
With the ever-increasing demands
on the network, it is important for
organisations to have a scalable
infrastructure, which forms the basis for a
future-proof solution and guarantees high
network performance to meet the demands
of today and tomorrow. In enterprises,
fibre cables are used mainly in network
backbones and server rooms or datacentres
to connect switches to switches.
Issue 15
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS