Sincerely, Bob Fitzgerald VP Regional Director Asia Pacific 2 SNETWORKnews A NOTE FROM BOB FITZGERALD ADC KRONE News 3 Stake In The Ground For FTTH 14 Outstanding Success At CeBIT 15 ADC
Trang 1In this issue
I What’s the fuss about “Cat 7”? I ADC KRONE Joins FTTH Council
I Central Coast Manufacturer of the Year 2005!
Trang 2No one knows communications network infrastructure like ADC KRONE Sharing our knowledge is a promise we make to you day in and day out, to enable you to make the best infrastructure decisions possible
Being an inaugural member of the Fibre-To-The-Home Council in Asia Pacific is yet another example of this promise Our membership in the FTTH Council will allow us to share with you the latest technology trends and application requirements, guidelines for educated business decisions and best practices for implementation from all over the world Dave Anderson explains this further on page three, it’s worth a read
Earlier this year we introduced the Australian market to the new TrueNet® - the one true network infrastructure solution It features the combined ADC KRONE portfolio of products for enterprise customers We have had considerable interest in our portfolio additions In fact, there have already been significant sales of products, particularly in TrueNet’s enhanced fibre offerings
This shows how the benefits of the ADC KRONE integration are delivered to you - our customer
Glen Johnston introduces the FibreGuide range
on page twelve, a good way for you to find out more about our new fibre offerings
For more than 20 years ADC KRONE has maintained a leading position in the Australian IT&T market, demonstrating consistent excellence
in manufacturing processes and product innovation The numerous awards from AEEMA and CCMA are a clear signal of our dedication to excellence and innovation We are pleased to announce that in line with this proud history, for the second consecutive year, we have won the title of Central Coast Manufacturer of the Year Please join me in congratulating our Australian staff on this achievement
ADC KRONE succeeds because of our people and customers I would like to thank all of our valued customers who continue to vote with their orders for ADC KRONE and who enable us to succeed where other brands have failed to grow their market share
Sincerely, Bob Fitzgerald
VP Regional Director Asia Pacific
2 SNETWORKnews
A NOTE FROM BOB FITZGERALD
ADC KRONE News
3 Stake In The Ground For FTTH
14 Outstanding Success At CeBIT
15 ADC KRONE Scores Three Wins
at the Central Coast
Manufacturing Awards
Technical Articles
4 What’s The Fuss About “Cat 7”
10 Planning For 10Gbps Ethernet
12 Fibreguide Fibre Management System
Customer Stories
6 Banking On Copper
Editor: Sarah Bishop Art Direction: Nora Collins Website: adckrone.com/au
CONTENTS
Copyright © 2005 ADC Communications (Australia) Pty Limited.
Trang 3Within Australia, FTTH is a “rising sun”
technology that will ultimately replace the
current copper-based and HFC-based telephone
and cable TV networks and is currently the
subject of trials The latest of these trials is in
Tasmania where 1,000 premises will be linked via
a FTTH network
ADC KRONE aims to be a significant leader in
the Australian market, providing world class fibre
infrastructure Being a global operation, ADC
KRONE is able to utilise our global scale and
locally implement best practice in technology
deployments from other markets, particularly the
United States
ADC KRONE is engaged in negotiations with
carriers and technology providers to assist in
overcoming the new infrastructure challenges
that FTTH deployments bring, specifically with our
harsh environment and conditions
Surveys of FTTH activity around the world show
that there are well over a million subscribers
already connected on optical fibre access, the
Asia Pacific region is the fastest growing market
and has the highest number of subscribers
According to Dittberner Associates, Inc., the
worldwide capital expenditures related to FTTH
access technology will reach US$22.8 billion in
2013, from an estimated US$3.7 billion in 2004
and predicts that the Asia Pacific region will be
the largest market for FTTH access technology
with 52.8% of the total, or US$12 billion dollars
The FTTH council is a non-profit organisation whose mission is to educate, promote and accelerate FTTH and the resulting economic and quality of life enhancements across the Asia Pacific region
The inaugural Asia Pacific general meeting was held in Yokohama Japan from 31 May - 1 June
2005 and was attended by YK Loke from our Singapore office Also in attendance and presenting for ADC KRONE was Patrick Sims, who
is the Chairman of the North American FTTH Council
Our second participant in the forum is Alan Crawford who is based at Asia Pacific headquarters
in Australia Alan has a very strong background in fibre and will be furthering our participation by attending an upcoming meeting in Taiwan to ensure we bring to Australia the global knowledge in this exciting new field
Please contact your local ADC KRONE office for assistance in your deployments or if you would like to be kept up to date with proceedings in the
NETWORKnewsS 3
ADC KRONE is proud to announce that we are a founding member of
the Asia Pacific division of the Fibre To The Home (FTTH) Council.
Dave Anderson, Regional Director Sales and Sales Support, Carrier Networks, Indo Pacific
The FTTH council is a non-profit organisation whose mission is to educate, promote and accelerate FTTH and the resulting economic and quality of life enhancements across the Asia
Pacific region
Trang 4If you want to strike fear into the heart of your local cabling installer you need go no further than mentioning Cat 7 If you want to strike fear into the heart of your CFO you need go no further than mentioning a cabling infrastructure at triple the cost There is a great amount of misinformation in the marketplace about Cat 7
This article answers some exaggerated claims and seeks to bring facts into the discussion
The past often helps to predict the future
Knowing that Ethernet has evolved in speed by a factor of 10 we can safely assume that the next leap would move the industry to 10Gbps over UTP This already became a reality with fibre, accepted in 2002 as a backbone technology In the design and implementation of networks we are taught to ensure backbone speeds are 10 times greater than that of our typical telecommunications outlet (TO) Today 4 pair Gigabit Ethernet (1000BaseT) is the default standard transceiver, outselling 10/100Mbps solutions in NIC and switch port sales
This brings us to the question of which copper cabling solution will support 10Gig to 100m Cat 6 was meant to offer some level of future proofing for such an event Unfortunately it did not! The
IEEE 802.3an 10GBaseT Working Group in 2003 identified deficiencies within Cat 6 that prohibited its use for 10Gig to the full 100m In doing so, this opened up Pandora’s box to supporters of Cat 7 Class F
So what is this magical cabling solution in Cat 7 that can support 10Gbps? It’s not only shielded but the shield is triple-screened! It looks conspicuously similar to the IBM Type 6 cable of yesteryear Hold on does this mean the supporters of shielded solutions got it right? Not exactly! Remember that four letter word – cost This was the primary driver within the IEEE 802.3an 10GBaseT Working Group (now a Task Force) that drove them to identify why Cat 6 would not work for the full 100m and target specifications for the cabling industry to develop
a new UTP solution that would work i.e Augmented Cat 6
The IEEE 802.3an 10GBaseT Task Force is made
up primarily of active hardware members These are the makers of chipsets, protocols and the boxes that house them It’s worth noting that these members are not there for the equitable distribution of technology, but rather as representatives of their companies, interested in selling technology This drove the development of the new form of Cat 6 – Augmented Cat 6 Simply speaking, take advantage of the good characteristics within Cat 6 and augment/change the parameters that are deemed to need improvement
Fortunately, the cabling industry met the challenge in developing an Augmented Cat 6 solution that can be used for the full 100m
4 SNETWORKnews
WHAT’S THE FUSS ABOUT “CAT 7”?
Tim Takala discusses the timing of Cat 7 – with 10 Gig looming is it ripe or hype?
Tim Takala, Corporate Business
Manager
So where do you think this leaves the supporters/suppliers of Cat 7? They’ve actually come
up with some pretty creative
marketing.
Trang 5deployment of 10Gbps Barriers of Alien Crosstalk and Insertion Loss were met through clever engineering and innovation to allow UTP cable to yet again offer a cost effective means of transporting high speed data
With the above in mind do you think companies that sell switches would like to tell their customers that they can run 10Gig using their new hot off the press “U beaut” 10Gig Switch, BUT they must install Cat 7, at triple the cost? Or that the customer’s current Cat 6 solution can be used for 55m and Augmented Cat 6 can be installed to run the full 100m at lower cost, typically only a 30% increase over current Cat 6? It is a barrier to market for switch manufacturers if the customer is required to upgrade their existing cabling to support the implementation new technology
So where do you think this leaves the supporters / suppliers of Cat 7? They’ve actually come up with some pretty creative marketing
For one, they are saying that Augmented Cat 6 requires additional skills beyond Cat 6 This is simply not true Augmented Cat 6 is Cat 6, only engineering to mitigate the effects of alien crosstalk As long as the manufacturer’s instructions are followed, the time and skill to install the solution are the same
They are also saying that the size of the cable is
“about 8mm OD” This is also not true ADC KRONE’s version of this cable has a 6.7mm nominal OD This is still well below that of Cat 7
Another argument in support of Cat 7 states
“you can split the pairs to save money” I found this particularly entertaining considering that Gigabit Ethernet, much less 10Gig, requires all 4 pairs to work! If this were done you would be left with a network that supported 100BaseTX Ethernet at a maximum You might as well be installing old Cat 5 UTP One supporter of Cat 7 was even bold enough
to suggest that you can install a single Cat 7 cable instead of 3 Cat 5e cables to the same location The only logic in doing this would be that a single Cat 7 cable would cost you as much or more than 3 Cat 5e cables!
Cat 7 cabling solutions do have a place in the market Otherwise customers would not be buying them They offer excellent protection from EMI and some enhanced security over UTP solutions That being said, the existing market share says it all Gone are the days of endless IT funding CFO’s are asking hard questions regarding where funding is spent and rightfully
so In order to make 10Gig infrastructures a viable reality, a cost effective solution needs to be deployed with the longest timeline to obsolescence, as well as a justifiable return on investment
Augmented Cat 6 offers the ability to deliver 10Gig, to the full 100m distance of its Cat 5e and Cat 6 predecessors, while at the same time offering that next tenfold leap in Ethernet that its Cat 6 predecessor could not This is all done on an Unshielded Twisted Pair solution that installers are already eagerly embracing, and customers are
NETWORKnewsS 5
“Cat 7 supporters are saying that Augmented Cat 6 requires additional skills beyond Cat 6 This is simply not true As long as the manufacturer’s instructions are followed, the time and skill to install the solution are the same.”
Clockwise from the left: coaxial cable, STP Cat 7 and UTP Cat 6 cable.
Trang 6When Phil Rogerson, network manager Europe, for ‘The Bank’ was tasked with building a new European data centre for his company he knew he had a tough time ahead
Michael Crane talked to Phil and to Steve Banks,
an independent consultant retained by the Bank,
to help with the project
The Bank - one of the major multinationals
which for security reasons we’re not permitted to name - has a massive presence in London with thousands
of staff, hundreds of high-powered “traders” and all of the services to support them
The Bank’s European operations are equally massive and progress (since this scribe reported on the building
of the previous comms room/data centre some seven years ago) has moved on to such a degree that a completely new London-based data centre was needed to support not just UK but pan-European operations
THE REQUIREMENTS
Responsible for the design, implementation and management of the Bank’s physical infrastructure throughout Europe, Phil Rogerson is acutely
aware of his organisation’s dependence on the infrastructure he lays down - and the risk to the business of failures in that infrastructure
Rogerson explained, “The Bank’s traders trade multi millions each day and almost all of our business is either conducted electronically or relies
on IT systems The cost to the company of downtime is stratospheric - probably millions of dollars per minute They expect system availability
of at least 61 minutes in every hour and when they want a move or change done the expectation is yesterday, not sometime today or tomorrow!”
Of course in today’s banking business, IT is an area they all invest in extensively because providing information to their bank’s traders 10 or
20 milliseconds faster than their competitors gives them the edge in that manic high-stress trader-floor environment that we’ve all seen on the TV
“This banking culture,” explained Rogerson,
“puts two opposing requirements on us for the physical network On the one hand is the need to future proof You only get one chance to set up a data centre for its five to seven year life There’s
no question of going in halfway through because you didn’t put in fast enough cabling infrastructure when you built it, so future proofing is a very high priority”
“But on the other hand, the IT infrastructure has to be absolutely rock solid because downtime
BANKING ON COPPER
A NEW SPIN ON INVESTING FOR THE FUTURE BY A BA
‘The Bank’ – a major multinational which for security reasons we’re not permitted to name – has just completed a 10Gig copper network infrastructure upgrade.
Trang 7is not an option Which, of course, means that I want tried-and-tested solutions with lots of track record and field experience.”
The data centre itself had to be built to house some 150 cabinets of blade-servers and storage network devices and core Ethernet switches
These had to interconnect together and out to switches serving the London offices and traders,
as well as connecting masses of fibre linking the centre to its ‘mirror’ in a secret location, and to MAN and WAN interconnects to the European and rest of world locations of The Bank
Multiple fibre routes, resilient power and air-cooling were all part of the requirements
BREAKING NEW GROUND
“Normally,” explained Phil, “data centres are cabled from point-to-point and usually in fibre So the core switches servers and routers are equipped with fibre GBICs (Gigabit interfaces) and a fibre patch cable is run directly from the core switch port out to the opposite server - sometimes via a fibre patch panel in the server cabinet”
“But this approach,” he says, ”can often lead
to ‘finger trouble’, particularly at the core switches where it is all too easy to accidentally unplug or disturb the wrong port.”
Consultant Steve Banks took up the story, “To avoid this potentially high risk problem we decided
that all of the connectivity between the switches and active equipment had to be based around a central patching frame so that the connections into the switches could be regarded as ‘permanent’
Then Phil could keep the switch cabinets locked to avoid any down-time accidents.”
Phil and Steve had decided to adopt this policy whether they used fibre or copper for the interconnects using an ‘mdf-frame style’ patching suite for best space utilisation - rather than the conventional patch-cabinet approach
So the overall scheme would be locked switch cabinets with permanent cabling to the switchside of patch panels on the patching frame, then patch cords across to the active equipment side of the frame, with permanent cabling to patch panels within each active equipment cabinet and finally patch cords to the servers and routers in the cabinets
Phase 1 included 50 active equipment cabinets with 2000 patching ports on each side of the patching frame
Phase II, recently completed, doubles the size to
100 active cabinets containing some 400 servers,
OR THE FUTURE BY A BANK!
“We don’t need 10Gigs today, but we’re almost certain to during the lifespan
of the data centre.”
Trang 88 SNETWORKnews
routers, storage devices etc., and Phase III which
is just about to start will take the total to 150 active equipment cabinets
10G - FIBRE OR COPPER?
From a future-proofing point of view, The Bank wanted the data centre cabling infrastructure to
be 10Gig-ready “We don’t need 10Gigs today,”
says Phil, “but we’re almost certain to during the lifespan of the data centre”
“At the time we were planning the data centre there were only two serious options - Fibre and Category 7 Then in November 2003, ADC KRONE demonstrated to the IEEE standards working group (which Steve is involved with) that they could manufacture a UTP cable very similar
to Cat 6 that would allow 10 Gigabit/s over UTP
“Steve Banks and I spent a lot of time considering the options”, Phil recalled “Now that we have OM3 multimode fibre in the market, this was a good potential choice In fact if ADC KRONE hadn’t come up with CopperTen™when they did
it would have been our preferred choice.”
The downside of fibre, however, Phil and Steve explained was that most of the legacy equipment had UTP copper NICs (network interface card) and nearly all active equipment currently ships with Gigabit UTP ports as standard
“So if we’d taken this option there would have been the added expense of fibre GBIC interfaces for all the switches and active equipment” said Phil
Category 7, at the time was the only ratified standard for copper cabling that was 10 Gig capable
“We found Cat 7 expensive, and didn’t like the fact it uses either a non-RJ45 connector which
isn’t backward compatible, or one that looks like RJ-45 but has extra contacts Also, it uses pairs-in-metal-foil where each of five shields needs to be terminated carefully Too many opportunities for errors and problems, we thought!”
Another possible solution they considered briefly was 10GBase-CX4, which is a ratified standard for 10Gig over copper - designed as a cheaper replacement for fibre channel “But with
a reach limited to 15 metres, and little field experience we discounted it immediately” said Rogerson
“The only other standards based option we had,” Steve Banks recalls, “was Category 6 But
of course this was only standardised for data speeds up to 1 Gigabit/s although at the time there was talk that it might do 10 Gigabit/s at up
to 55 metres”
“After much consideration, we decided on ADC KRONE’s CopperTen because it complied with IEEE requirements for 10Gig and came with
a full warranty Furthermore it was full standards compliant to Category 6 - which meant we were working with tried and trusted UTP and RJ-45 technology - which is what most of the world is used to” Phil recalled
Asked why they chose ADC KRONE, Phil replied that The Bank believes there are major operational benefits - particularly for a worldwide organisation - in standardising on one manufacturer for mission critical infrastructure
“We decided some years ago that specifying ADC KRONE gave us products of the highest standard and some ‘clout’, which is more like a partnership, where we actually work closely with ADC KRONE on new developments that benefit
us both.”
FIBRE DEVELOPMENT
Of course, although The Bank had decided on CopperTen for its main intra data centre cabling,
“After much consideration,
we decided on ADC KRONEs CopperTen because it complied with IEEE requirements for 10Gig and came with a full warranty.”
Trang 9there’s still a massive requirement for fibre
connectivity through to the comms rooms - of
which there are three in the building, and from
thence into the London head office building They
also go out to the Metropolitan Area and Wide
Area Networks that link this data centre to its
secret-location “mirror” and out to the Bank’s
offices throughout the world
“We have a golden rule with fibre patch
panels,” Phil explained, “Once they’ve been
terminated and are operational we never ever
open them again There’s just far too much risk of
fibre damage - and that’s a downtime risk we
can’t afford to take This means that all expansion
requires additional fibre patch panels, which,
apart from the cost, can eat up very valuable
space We worked together with ADC KRONE to
find a better, more compact solution where each
1U fibre patch panel is actually split into two 0.5U
completely independent trays This made it far
easier to build growth capability into the fibre
pitching frames.”
POWERFUL SOLUTION
With 100 racks of active equipment there must be
a significant power requirement and Phil pointed
out three massive 500kVA UPS (uninterruptible
power supply) units operating in ‘n=1 redundancy’
and so there’s potentially one megawatt of power
being consumed in the data centre Which led to
the next challenge: “The amount of air handling
we needed in what is a fairly low ceiling location
meant that we couldn’t use our preferred under
floor cabling techniques and had to devise an
overhead solution instead” Phil said
Are Phil and The Bank happy with the results?
“When we went fully live in June 2004 we had
installed 2000 ports and 70kM of CopperTen
That was completely successful and we had Phase
II with 100 active equipment cabinets up and
running earlier this year and Phase III is about to
start”
“We have now also taken the decision to fit
CopperTen into the next phase of our major
secret-location “mirror” data centre This has
some 500 cabinets operational, but the next 50,
being fitted now have not only 10 Gigabit’s
CopperTen, but also ADC KRONE’s yet to be
launched 10 Gigabit Intelligent Patching System
-or maybe I shouldn’t have told you about that
yet!” Phil chuckled I
NETWORKnewsS 9
ADC KRONE has assisted the not-for-profit Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) through a sponsorship deal which enables vital communication between their two airport buildings HARS works to recover and where possible, restore to flying condition, aircraft that have played a significant role in Australian aviation history
HARS was faced with the challenge of connecting the two communication buildings at their Albion Park site With the broadband service terminating in their airport terminal building, it was necessary for the administration building to share the network and connection
”Being an airport, both hanging wires and trench digging were impossible so the only solution was to set up a wireless connection.” Said Kerry Gnaden, HARS volunteer “It was best to run with a line-of-sight technology.” HARS approached ADC KRONE with a request for assistance The ADC KRONE Terescope was installed in December
of 2004 as a temporary solution to facilitate the transmission of information
The airport is currently being expanded for regular passenger services and HARS is aiming to make their complex as technologically advanced as possible Kerry explained “We are using innovative designs and methods in the construction of the Hangar and Museum complex, which will house our historical flying aircraft and memorabilia The ADC KRONE Terescope link fits in very well with this philosophy The new complex will form a showpiece for the Illawarra Region as it moves towards becoming a technology driven
FINDS NEW HANGAR
One of HARS collection, affectionately named “Connie”
Trang 10Installed cabling has always led the primary data rate For example, in 1995 nearly 70% of UTP installed cabling was the 100Mbps old Category
5 cable, yet over 90% of switch port sales were for only 10Mbps Ethernet protocol
Similarly in 2001, Category 5 and Category 6, which both support 1000Mbps, accounted for over 80% of UTP cabling installed Yet about 70% of switch port sales were for only 100Mbps
Building owners and end users were obviously taking advantage of the gains offered by reputable cabling vendors having superior products ahead of protocol requirements
Of course, the next logical step in the data rate
is another tenfold increase from 1000Mbps to 10Gbps With 10Gbps copper transceivers in development today and expected to be in the market in 2006, the cabling plant being installed now must be able to handle the new protocol
We know that Category 6 cabling can support 10Gbps transmission - but only to 55 metres, per
TIA TR42.7, Cat 6-TSB155 What we want is a 10Gbps UTP cabling solution that will support the full 100 metres
From a standards perspective, TIA TR42.7, Cat 6A in the draft TIA-568-B.2 Addendum 10 is the current view (July 2005) to support 10Gbps transmission over UTP at 100 metres Look for compliance with this standard as you shop for and test for a solution The draft standards also require full interoperability and backwards compatibility
The cabling industry does not drive the electrical parameters needed to run transmission protocols It is the IEEE that develops proposed protocols, understands what is needed from an electrical perspective, and then gives international standards bodies the responsibility for developing measurable parameters for the cable and connectors When in doubt, follow the IEEE lead
For Category 5 and Category 6 solutions, the pair-to-pair relationship is paramount to making a
PLANNING FOR 10GBPS ETHERNET OVER UTP
UTP cabling for 10 Gigabit Ethernet is a realistic expectation for network designers and IT managers It’s predictable, quantifiable and it’s available now.
10 SNETWORKnews
Peter Meijer, JP BE MSc,
RCDD, Technical Manager
and Industry Support
Welcome to Sarah Bishop – our newly appointed Marketing Specialist for Australia & New Zealand In this position, Sarah will be managing marketing programs for Australia and New Zealand, responsible for media relations, advertising, events and tradeshow presence
Sarah joins us from Vodafone and has a breadth of experience in direct marketing and advertising Amongst other things she has been the face behind many of Vodafone’s successful MMS campaigns
As editor of Network News, Sarah would welcome your comments, suggestions or contributions, and can be contacted by phone on (02) 4389 5364 or via email at sarah.bishop@adckrone.com
By Carsten Quiram, Regional Marketing Director, Asia Pacific.
NEW MARKETING SPECIALIST
AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND