November 2001 — ConnectEd
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
Fiber to the School Desk
A Quality Infrastructure
"We selected a team of vendors who could not only provide us with cost-effective solutions, but could work in our time frame," says Lytle. More than 30 miles of fiber were installed, both multimode and singlemode. From the MDF to the four IDF closets, 12 strands of multimode and six strands of singlemode were installed. The fiber optic cable was terminated into the Ortronics ORMMAC fiber distribution boxes in the Ortronics FiberMo cable management racks in closets. In addition, fiber to the school's remote buildings was housed in Ortronics Mighty Mo wall-mount cabinets in the MDF.
All the electronic hardware, hubs and servers were housed in the Ortronics FiberMo cable management racks, located in the middle of the telecommunications closets. By putting the racks in the middle of the four IDF rooms, it was easily accessible to work on either side of the rack. Each rack housed the electronics on top so that there would be nothing stacked on top of it for system reliability. The Ortronics FiberMo racks were equipped with AC raceway fillers for use with the FiberMo Interbay management panels, as well as lower troughs to keep the cable separated and organized between the electronics, the patch panels and ORMMAC fiber cabinets. Two ORMMAC IIs were installed in the MDF, each holding up to 64 fiber connections. In the IDFs they installed a total of eight ORMMAC IIIs for up to 96 fibers per cabinet and six ORMMAC Is for 32 fiber connections each.
Ready for the Future
"Although we took the fiber optic cable all the way out to the new high school, we are retrofitting the cabling to the middle school, which will not be all fiber," says Banks. "Most schools have 10 megs to the desk. Most people think that a fiber infrastructure is costly. It's not the infrastructure, it's the NICs, for which we see costs coming down over time. Once the fiber is in, our bandwidth is unlimited. We started with the high school because that's where we see the most need." Currently, the Barbers Hill High School has 750 enrolled students. The new high school is expected to house 1,300 students.
"For additional speed and protection we even installed a unique anti-virus software, which has helped obtain the use of a new Internet-based ASAP product line from Network Associates," says Banks. "With our advanced infrastructure we will be wired to handle the constantly changing technology in data applications."
Arlene Franchini
afranchini@ortronics.com
Contact Information
Ortronics Inc.
New London, CT
800-934-5432;
www.ortronics.com
Carol Everett Oliver
Freelance Writer for Ortonics Inc.
FIBER OPTICS TERMS
Category 5e (Enhanced) - A category of performance for inside wire and cable. Used in support of signaling rates of up to 100 MHz over distances of up to 100 meters. Calls for tighter twists, electrical balancing between pairs and fewer cable anomalies. CAT5e is intended to support 100 Base-T, ATM and Gigabit Ethernet.
