Our Optical LAN can be found in many school districts, college and hospital campuses, and other state-of-the-art modern facilities. But recently, the technology was deployed in a unique setting – the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Forest Service’s historic building in Washington, D.C.
Built in the late 19th century, the iconic Romanesque Sidney Yates Building was designed for about 300 employees. Furthermore, telecommunications was obviously not a factor during that time. But today, the facility houses more than 850 connected employees and needs capacity for 1,200. How does one bring 21st century connectivity into a facility like the Sidney Yates Building?
After careful evaluation, the facility chose a hybrid approach that combined our Optical LAN solution with the traditional switch-based network, Wi-Fi and DAS. Tellabs’ Optical LAN technology was essential in enabling the facility to triple the number of connections and increase the bandwidth.
In addition, Optical LAN overcame the distance limitations of the traditional copper network. In the historic building, maintaining the TIA standard of 90-meter distance limitations for work-area outlets with the copper option was impossible. This is simply because copper network was not able to go beyond this distance and required equipment and telecom closets for which there was no room. With its 12.5-mile reach, Optical LAN reduced the footprint of the cabling by two-thirds and provided flexibility to deploy a low-profile, high-performance network in this unique setting.
For more details about this unique deployment with our partner TE Connectivity, read the article in the March issue of Cabling Installation & Maintenance magazine. For more information about our Optical LAN solution, click here.
