Ohms & Watts Services (“OWS”) is accustomed to undertaking cabling projects of all kinds. At the smaller end of the scale, the company installs audio, telephone, electrical and data cabling into domestic houses and flats. For larger projects, structured data cabling and electrical supply is provided for infrastructure buildings, such as airports or shopping malls, spread across a wide area. This is where the limits of cable performance are encountered, where demand is high and security of supply is critical. The task of pulling high-performance fibre through roof conduits, including high storage facilities was followed by patching and a period of testing.
When OWS undertook this assignment, to provide fibre-optic cable across a 5-hectare site, it was clear that performance would be a critical consideration. The organisation planned this upgrade to its bandwidth capability, to allow for a significant increase in transmission requirements over the coming years. With the new ‘OM4’ cable in place, allowing 10-Gigabit transmission over relatively long distances, it is anticipated that bandwidth requirements will be catered for, over the next decade and beyond. It is the spectacular improvements in data bit rates achievable with optical fibre that makes upgrades from copper networks cost-effective.
As consumer usage of Internet connectivity changes with advances in technology, one of the major demands driving bandwidth requirement is video transfer. Videos have become a staple of social networking and website presentations. Imagine, then, the pressures on a network of an organisation devoted to treating, storing, and editing moving picture material. Nor is this just your everyday Internet video fodder; here, it is the highest resolutions which are being used, often to preserve detail of films of historic significance. Therefore, high bandwidth availability is paramount.
Here, visual and audio material may be transferred between departments, between a curatorial department dealing with the archiving, another section where high-resolution stills are dealt with, and further areas of the site involved in restoration and transferring material between different media types.
OWS was also responsible for upgrading the existing copper network to CAT6a cable. Significantly superior to its predecessor CAT6, 6a cable (“Augmented CAT6”) caters for frequency transmissions up to 500Mhz.
A kilometre of 8-core OM4 fibre cable was laid between eight 22U cabinets. OM4 supports 10GB data rates up to more than 500m. To those unfamiliar with the usage of 'U', as applied to IT racks, it is a unit of measurement equating to one-and-three-quarter inches (about 45mm) high.
Whilst using high-quality basic materials is the sound basis that one would hope for in a network installation, often it is the points of intersection or connection where the battle is won or lost. OWS used one of the latest Fujikura fusion splicers for joining sections of optical fibre cable at this site. Fusion splicing uses high temperature to join fibres together. The splicer can align the fibre ends with tremendous accuracy.
As with all fibre connections, precision is essential, to avoid distortion of the signal through reflection, refraction or blockage by detritus.