Bandwidth in the Building...A New Approach

Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) has been around for many years now, andis in many aspects a very mature market and technology. The priceshave of course come down over the years, and this technology is nowattracting interest in a totally different market space.

Cabling of buildings has historically been accomplished using copper.But, what if new builds were to boast fiber instead of copper, beingbased on the mature, low-cost FTTH technology, i.e. , PON? In manycases, fiber is now less expensive and easier to install than similarcopper infrastructures.

More and more, this is exactly what we are starting to see, and thepractice is referred to as passive optical local area network (PO-LAN),or POL for short. This is of course fueled by the ever-increasingdemand for highly cost-effective and high-quality voice, video anddata in the enterprise space.

POL replaces aggregation electronics and copper cables with passiveoptical splitters and singlemode fibers. This creates an architecturewith lower purchase, installation and maintenance costs, in additionto a far longer life span than traditional copper architectures. One ofthe incentives for POL is that it is a cost-effective fiber-to-the-desktopenterprise solution that is changing the network and the way that wethink about designing, installing and maintaining the network. POL isreferred to as passive, because there is no need for active electronicsbetween the main equipment room and the work areas, but ratherjust passive optical splitters that distribute converged servicesdirectly from main switch to the terminals (without using electricity).This architecture promises to bring high performance (gigabit)broadband to the desktop at a fraction of the cost of typicalcopper-based Ethernet LAN configurations.

A second incentive is the technology’s proven track record - with itsroots in FTTH, POL offers true carrier - class robustness and reliability.However, that doesn’t mean you should deploy FTTH technologydesigns into your LAN. FTTH infrastructure was designed to maximizesplitter use for low-density, static environments like neighborhoodsand apartment buildings. Enterprise environments like office buildingsand campuses require cabling system infrastructures designed forhigher density and ongoing moves, adds and changes (MACs).

A study titled “Transformation of the Enterprise Network using POL”carried out by Networks Strategy Partners mentions that if asingle-building office were to replace its network with a POL, thatoffice would end up cutting its CAPEX by 39% and its OPEX by 52%,for a total cost-of-ownership (TCO) saving amounting to 45%. If amultibuilding campus were to employ a POL, the savings wouldamount to 41% in terms of CAPEX and 71% in terms of OPEX, whichrepresents a TCO of 54%.

The image below, which is pulled from the Association for PassiveOptical LAN, highlights these differences:

From a testing standpoint, this remains a very-short reach PONarchitecture. As such, with technology offering such as the intelligentOptical Link Mapper(iOLM), EXFO is uniquely well-positioned as atesting partner. To learn more about these solutions, visit our PassiveOptical LAN page.

More information in: www.fibercasa.com orwww.fiber-optic-fusion-splicer.com