April 2003 — Applications

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Disadvantaged Kentucky and Tennessee Schools Graduate to High-Speed Cabling

When you think of Kentucky and Tennessee, coal mining, cotton fields, catfish and rural farm areas probably come to mind; not high-speed, high-bandwidth cabling. However, through government grants, elementary and high school students in certain low-income areas of Kentucky and Tennessee are now benefiting from receiving the most advanced voice, video and data networking systems - from wireless backbones to the latest ratified Category (CAT) 6 connectivity.

"When you're wiring schools that have been around since as far back as the 1930s, you want to be assured that your cabling system will be warranted to last at least 10 years or until they get a new facility," says Dennis Gomer, president of Computer Consulting & Network Design Inc. Together, Gomer and John B. Allen, president of installation firm Application Services Inc., have assisted many Kentucky and Tennessee school districts applying for the E-Rate government program to install sensible, structured cabling systems that give faculty and students the benefits of Internet access and advanced software tools.

Spending Funds Wisely

The Schools and Libraries Corp. is a newly formed nonprofit organization established by the Federal Communications Commission to administer the E-Rate program. All K-12 schools and public libraries qualify for the program and receive discounts according to their level of economic disadvantage, which is determined by the annual percentage of students eligible for the National School Lunch Program. "To spend these funds wisely, we have tried to standardize the components of the cabling infrastructure to make it easier for the schools to determine the percentages allotted for hardware and installation costs," says Gomer.

"By providing a 25-year warranted system from NetClear, a Berk-Tek/Ortronics alliance, such as NetClearGT2 or NetClearGT3, end-to-end high-performance cabling solutions consisting of a fiber-optic backbone and CAT 6 horizontal copper cabling, we were able to standardize the structured cabling system for the LAN within the school districts. This made it much more conducive than just installing a couple of modems and computers," says Allen.

Standardized Layout

The Wayne County School District, sprawled across 20 acres in Monticello, Ky., now has one of the most intricate communication systems. The district installed a wireless backbone to allow gigabits to the desktop through high-speed copper cabling. Currently, 100 Mbps are running to the desktops with an in-building fiber-optic backbone running at 1 Gbps. All the buildings are cabled with coax from the antenna to the access point, and are connected through UTP copper cabling to "telecom closets." This cabling is patched through Ortronics 48-port CAT 5e patch panels with Berk-Tek's LANmark-350 CAT 5e cable. In addition, the new high school has 48-port CAT 6 patch panels through LANmark-1000 CAT 6 cable for its data and video.

Most of the schools were provided with a standardized set of Ortronics connectivity products. All the Berk-Tek fiber-optic backbone cabling between closets is terminated in the main cross-connects (MC) and intermediate cross-connects (IC) to Ortronics ORMMAC fiber distribution cabinets. From there, it is patched over Berk-Tek's LANmark-350 CAT 5e, LANmark-1000 or LANmark-2000 enhanced CAT 6 cable through Ortronics Clarity6 48-port patch panels.