igabit to the desk is not just for the engineering students,” says Tim Deaver, manager of tech- nical services for the 300-acre campus shared by Ohio State University Newark (OSUN) and Central Ohio Technical College (COTC). “Ac- cess to video is an important part of just about every curriculum. We have students in digital media design and other fields who require ac- cess to very large files. Our goal is for students to access their applications from anywhere on the campus.” With plans to grow the student population from 5,000 today to more than 7,500 by 2009, campus officials determined that brick and mor- tar alone would not be the differentiator that would attract students. The IT infrastructure supporting the campus was deemed an equally important element to meet enrollment targets. With the proper infrastructure in place, the cam- pus could offer students the technical ameni- ties of advanced video applications, virtually non-blocking Internet access and ample storage for data and e-mail. Yet, designing an infrastructure to support gi- gabit to the desktop was complicated by an im- perative to future-proof the wired network. As alternatives were considered, fiber to the desk was evaluated, yet only briefly due to the added costs for fiber switches, cables and NICs. “Cop- per is still going to be a driving force to the desktop for the future, especially as long as the BIG Pipe “G C OVER S TORY C OVER S TORY Ohio institutions implement a 10-Gigabit Ethernet switched-fiber backbone to enable high-speed desktop applications over UTP copper. on Campus For Tim Deaver, the challenge was finding a horizontal UTP cabling solution that would support both gigabit today and 10 Gbps in the future. price for fiber components remains higher than for copper,” Deaver says. The challenge for Deaver was find- ing a horizontal UTP cabling solution that would support both gigabit today and 10 Gbps in the future. A major ob- stacle was that at the time Deaver was considering cabling options, all UTP solutions could only support a theoreti- cal 10GBase-T to only 55 meters–not the required standard of 100 meters for horizontal cabling systems. At 55 meters, more telecommunications rooms and more Ethernet switches would be required in each building. For OSUN and COTC to compete effectively for students, the IT infra- structure would have to be designed to support many different and bandwidth- intensive applications. Video on de- mand would be accessible through por- tal technology, presenting students with a dashboard for storage and retrieval of many types of files. A high-speed infra- structure would also be required to ex- pand conferencing services, already in use for nursing and other fields, so that full motion video could be carried across the campus or across the state, enabling teachers to multicast to many class- rooms at once. A BENEFICIAL ARRANGEMENT The shared arrangement between OSUN and COTC has proven benefi- cial to both colleges, Deaver says. While admissions and advising remain sepa- rate, this combined campus affords both organizations the cost efficiency of shar- ing facilities and resources, such as class- rooms, computers and the IT infrastruc- ture. In fact, sharing facilities and resources has allowed more services for students than would have been possible on separate campuses, even as enroll- ment has grown nearly 40% over the past several years. The creation of an advanced learn- ing environment continues to provide OSUN/COTC a competitive edge over other colleges in the area. Aside from top-notch programs and staff, new fa- cilities will continue to be required to meet enrollment projections. Already, a modern academic building, audito- rium and conference center have been built. A new student center and library are also in the project plan. To fully support video and other tech- nical services that would give the schools an edge in student recruitment, the campus network was designed with a 10-Gigabit Ethernet switched fiber backbone linking all buildings. This fi- ber ring would support not only cur- rent and planned applications but also would allow the campus to link with other schools in Ohio and across the nation. In Ohio, a dark fiber initiative has already linked the top 20 schools in the state to facilitate research and col- laboration, as well as enable distance learning between Ohio schools. With a 10-Gbps fiber backbone in place, design priorities for infrastruc- ture turned to enabling gigabit to the In the absence of standards for 10-Gigabit Ethernet over UTP, Shannon’s Law provided the guidance needed to find the correct solution. In the digital media design lab, students and teachers have access to conferencing and collaboration capabilities enabled by the campus’ high-speed connectivity. Cover Story desktop for every student and faculty member. Standards for 10-Gigabit Ethernet over UTP, however, were not in place at that time–and are not ready today. In the absence of such standards, Deaver and his team were able to select cabling products using a common prin- cipal used in the electronics industry for calculating the capacity required for communications between devices– Shannon’s Law. Also known as Shannon’s capacity, Shannon’s Law is a measure that de- scribes how efficiently a cable can trans- mit data at different rates. The Shannon’s table shows values for capac- ity expressed in bits per second for vari- ous distances. Taking into account the additional bandwidth required to over- come noise produced by active hard- ware, such as jitter, especially trouble- some in the higher frequencies, a Shannon’s capacity of 18-Gbps is re- quired from the cabling infrastructure to achieve 10-Gbps transmission at 100 meters. THE 100-METER SOLUTION When Deaver was searching for a 10-Gbps UTP solution in early 2004, cable manufacturers could not demon- strate Shannon’s capacity of 18 Gbps at 100 meters, due primarily to alien crosstalk, which is the amount of noise measured on a pair within a cable that is induced from an adjacent cable. Sev- eral vendors could meet the 18-Gbps requirement, but only at 55 meters. At a time when the OSUN/COTC staff considered the prospect of design- ing cable routes and telecom rooms to accommodate 55 meters, KRONE, which was acquired by ADC in 2004, was able to demonstrate Shannon’s ca- pacity in excess of 18 Gbps over a 100-meter cable with its new CopperTen cabling. Instead of using the traditional star filler to separate pairs within a cable, the CopperTen cable de- sign achieves a higher degree of separa- tion of adjacent pairs through an ob- lique star filler design, creating sufficient separation between the same color pairs to prevent alien crosstalk. In the absence of standards for 10-Gbps Ethernet over UTP, Shannon’s Law provided the guidance needed to find the correct solution. “Shannon’s capacity really told us what we needed to watch for, to make sure our network was future-proof,” explains Deaver. “We don’t have that future network now. Our idea was to put in the best cabling that we could possibly get so when those 10-gig copper cards come out, we’ll be ready.” Because ADC’s CopperTen cabling is backwards compatible to the TIA/EIA standards for Category 6 cabling and could demonstrate 18-Gbps transmis- sion over 100 meters, Deaver was able to have the infrastructure designed for standard 100-meter distances on each floor. With long hallways to deal with, all other solutions that could only handle 10-Gbps transmission at 55 meters would have greatly increased the cost of the project, he says. In the Founder’s Building, 110,000 feet of CopperTen cable was installed so that five telecom rooms could be con- solidated into one. If the cabling sys- tem supported 10 Gbps at only 55 meters, the cost for the building infra- structure would have doubled, accord- ing to Deaver. “For Founder’s, a 55- meter solution would have required two telecom rooms and two Ethernet switches,” he says, citing the six-figure cost of an Ethernet switch. In addition, Deaver and his team con- tinue to deploy voice over IP (VoIP) where it makes sense to consolidate voice and data traffic. While VoIP will probably never require the bandwidth available from a 10-Gbps cabling solu- tion, an infrastructure with fewer telecom rooms will require less active equipment to support VoIP, reducing capital expenditures for the campus network. As with any project, the cost of active equipment dwarfs the cost of the passive network infrastructure. “If we were to really future-proof the network, we would need a (cabling) sys- tem that would allow us to consolidate our data closets to as few as possible. Anything less than 100 meters was go- ing to cost us a lot of money today and in the long run,” says Deaver. The condition of existing cable paths in all buildings was not a surprise. Years of growth and change resulted in a spi- der web of cabling, with no apparent thought process given for ongoing man- agement of the infrastructure. Once cable and connectors were selected, Deaver and his team relied on Starcomm, the cabling contractor, to design appropriate cable routes for each building. 200,000 FEET OF CABLE Starcomm removed most of the old cable and installed new cable trays and ladder racks throughout each building to create defined cable routes. Proper access was provided so that moves, adds and changes in the future would be easier to perform. The installation team found no real difference between work- ing with CopperTen and Category 5e or Category 6 cable. Most significant, however, was the tight installation timeframe that re- quired the majority of the work to be performed during the summer break. The installers removed old cable, cre- ated new cable routes, installed about 200,000 feet of cable, and dressed and terminated everything in less than 60 days. With any major project, risk is a con- sideration, especially in the absence of standards to guide infrastructure design and product selection. One way risk was reduced was by requiring that the new 10-Gbps cabling system be fully chan- nel and component compliant with Cat- egory 6. Achieving noise and loss char- acteristics that satisfy transmission at both 250 MHz for Category 6 and 625 MHz for 10 Gbps was accomplished with ADC’s CopperTen augmented Category 6 cable. One way risk was reduced was by requiring that the new 10-Gbps cabling system be fully channel and component compliant with Category 6. CopperTen is designed to work on the upper end of the scales being set by vari- ous standards working groups. Today, TIA contends 10-Gbps signals should be sent at 500 MHz, while ISO desires a higher level, controlling the sweep out to 625 MHz. ADC chose to design CopperTen for transmission at 625 MHz, so that the cabling system will be well within specifications once standards are formally issued for 10-Gbps Ethernet over UTP. What really mitigated the risk of the project, however, was the warranty, says Deaver. The CopperTen cabling system was guaranteed for Category 6 channel and component compliance. It was also guaranteed for 18-Gbps capacity to en- able 10-Gbps transmission. “The war- ranty made all the difference in the world when it came to cable selection,” says Deaver. Investing in an infrastructure that would support gigabit to the desktop to- day and someday be able to take full ad- vantage of the 10-Gbps campus back- bone was for more than just the obvious cost savings of not having to recable Reprinted from Communications News , March 2005 Copyright © 2005 by Nelson Publishing Inc. • www.comnews.com buildings when 10-Gbps over UTP be- came a reality. Rather, the motivation was all about the students, Deaver offers. “We are committed to providing an About ADC Robert Switz ADC was founded in 1935 and today provides global network infrastructure products and services that enable the delivery of high-speed Internet, data, video and voice services. The company has sales in more than 150 countries. With the acquisition of the KRONE Group in 2004, ADC now provides an integrated portfolio of products for enterprise net- works with TrueNet Structured Cabling Solutions. TrueNet com- bines cable, connectivity and cable-management solutions for fi- ber, 10-Gigabit Ethernet over UTP copper and Category 6/5e from the data center to the desktop. Industry veteran Robert E. Switz is chief executive officer and president of ADC. He has played an instrumental role in transforming ADC in recent years, developing and implementing the strategies that are extending the company’s leadership in network infrastructure solutions for all types of networks. Switz joined ADC in 1984 and has served as CFO, president of the broadband access and transport business unit, and executive vice president. Switz also serves as a director on the boards of Hickory Tech Corp. and Broadcom Corp. For more information from ADC: www.adc.com exceptional education experience. One way we accomplish that goal is making sure students can take full advantage of the technologies available,” he says. ❏ Cover Story . major ob- stacle was that at the time Deaver was considering cabling options, all UTP solutions could only support a theoreti- cal 10GBase-T to only 55. especially as long as the BIG Pipe “G C OVER S TORY C OVER S TORY Ohio institutions implement a 10-Gigabit Ethernet switched-fiber backbone to enable high-speed