The desire for mobility, along with the expansion of connected services,

The desire for mobility, along with the expansion of connected services, appears to lead to a new type of corporate network. Fiber optic backbone with copper to the desktop where people want direct connections and multiple wireless access points, more than is common in the past, for full coverage and maintaining a reasonable number of users per access point is the new norm for corporate networks.

Most building management systems use proprietary copper cabling, for example thermostat wiring and paging/audio speaker systems. Security monitoring and entry systems, certainly the lower cost ones, still depend on coax copper cable, although high security facilities like government and military installations often pay the additional cost for fiber’s more secure nature.

Surveillance systems are becoming more prevalent in buildings, especially governmental, banking, or other buildings that are considered possible security risks. While coax connections are common in short links and structured cabling advocates say you can run cameras limited distances on Cat 5E or Cat 6 UPT like computer networks, fiber has become a much more common choice. Besides offering greater flexibility in camera placement because of its distance capability, fiber optic cabling is much smaller and lightweight, allowing easier installation, especially in older facilities like airports or large buildings that may have available spaces already filled with many generations of copper cabling.

When these premises communications systems connect to the outside world, it is generally to singlemode optical fiber. The entrance facility and equipment room must accommodate the equipment needed to make those connections.

December 24, 2011

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