NETCOMMS EUROPE VOL 4 ISS 6

Volume IV, Issue 6 2014

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FEATURES The Internet Of Things

Enclosures and Racks In focus

FEATURES Siemon’s IcePack Technology FEATURES The Firewall - 25 Years On

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NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

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CONTENTS

COMMENT/OPINION 14 Optical Fibre Cabling Futures

How the Class system is now dead

CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE 10 Cost-Effective Future Proofing

Looking beyond the networking horizon

12 Managing Power And Peformance

How comms technology is continuing to evolve

32 Building The Right FTTH Architecture 42 Overcoming The Fibre Challenge

Cascaded fibre indexing

E Space Business Centre, 181 Wisbech Road, Littleport, Cambridge, CB6 1RA Tel 01353 865403 info@netcommseurope.com www.netcommeurope.com

How ISPs can embrace the need for speed

INTERNET OF THINGS 8 Understanding The Internet Of Things

How the Internet is changing the networking model

ENCLOSURES AND RACKS 16 Tapping The Power Of IcePack 38 When Form Meets Function

How Siemon’s IcePack technology reduces cooling energy

How data centre space can be optimised

D ATA C E N T R E S 22 The Norway connection

How Schneider Electric plugged into hydro-electricity

STRUCTURED CABLING 18 Success For Pre-Terminated Networks 34 Too Many Cable Choices

Tapping the power of pre-fab technology

Simplifying the networking selection process

CASE STUDY 46 Commercial DMR Service Takes Off 48 Bespoke Solutions Satisfy

A better digital wireless system for London Heathrow

PDU Online’s product range beings benefits to all

TEST AND MEASUREMENT 26 Easier Testing For Gigabit Compliance

How bandwidth is changing the network landscape

NETWORK MONITORING 28 When The NMS Is Not Enough

A new approach to network monitoring

D ATA S E C U R I T Y 30 Advanced gateways

REGULARS 5

Foreword

6

Industry News

www.netcommseurope.com

The firewall - an evolution in IT defences

Published under licence by: LGN Media, a subsidiary of The Lead Generation Network Ltd Publisher & Managing Director: Ian Titchener Editor: Steve Gold Production Manager: Rachel Titchener Advertising Sales: Bob Handley Reprographics by Bold Creative Price: €50 | £35 Subscription rate: €200 | £140 The views expressed in the articles and technical papers are those of the authors and are not endorsed by the publishers.

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NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

3

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FOREWORD

Say hello to cellco carrier aggregation

One of the biggest challenges facing the Internet industry in the UK is the speed with which data can be delivered across the final mile.

Most business users will be familiar with the copper and fibre technologies currently available. If you are lucky you can get up to 80 Mbps from FTTC but in many towns and cities, users have to put up with around 6 to 10 Mbps...!

In urban and country areas, however, these speeds drop to below 2 Mbps - which is pretty miserable if you are trying to run a business.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been talking to the UK cellcos about their plans to tap the power of high-speed cellular communications to deliver healthy data speeds, even in country areas, but the stumbling block is always the available frequency bandwidth.

Now it seems that EE and Vodafone has reached their Rubicon by rolling out their 4.5G services in the real world.

AKA LTE Advanced, 4.5G is now being rolled out by Vodafone in London, Birmingham and Manchester, and by EE in London.

The technology uses a technique called carrier aggregation that essentially glues together the 800MHz plus 2.6GHz wavebands, allowing cellular bandwidths of up to 150 Mbps across the final mile.

Why is this important, I hear you ask?

Well, 800MHz is an excellent frequency that allows cellular signals to reach through the walls and ceilings of buildings, whilst 2.6 GHz is better suited to short-range communications, such as for in-building and, of course, mezzanine office areas.

This is a very important step in cellular communications, as the use of carrier aggregation allows the best possible usage to be made of the available bandwidth, allowing a high-speed Internet connection to be delivered across the `final mile’ with little or no attenuation.

Put simply, this technology allows a cellco to use its available wireless frequencies to deliver previously unheard-of Internet speeds to businesses and end users.

This is incredibly good news for the networking industry, as the take-up of networking hardware in businesses will almost certainly take off in parallel with the new higher speeds.

May all of your networking problems be little ones…

Steve Gold Editor – Netcomms Europe

www.netcommseurope.com

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

5

INDUSTRY NEWS

xxxxxxx

...NEWSWIRE...NEWSWIRE...NEWSWIRE. 

Excel Networking Solutions, the xxxxxx. copper, optical cabling and rack solutions provider, has launched a new range of desktop power distribution units.

The latest addition to the Excel range is designed to add greater accessibility to the work place as it presents both power and network ports in a compact and stylish design that sits on the edge of the desk, removing the need to scramble underneath to charge and power phones, tablets and laptops.

According to the company, the stylish anodised aluminium desk top PDUs are easily fitted to the desktop with clamps supplied and are available with UK or Schuko Power Sockets, along with options for 6c apertures to accept data outlets and USB power. The USB outlets on the units supply up to 2.1 amps permitting phones or tablets to be charged.

Announcing the new PDUs, Tracey Calcutt, the firm’s marketing manager said that the idea to add these products to the range actually came from a suggestion from one of our Excel Partners at a previous partner briefing.

“We are always keen to get feedback and ideas from our partners and particularly where they think we have a gap in the range,” she said, adding that the desktop PDUs complement the company’s existing PDU range, as well as adding another potential revenue stream for Excel’s partners. www.excel-networking.com



Interoute has announced plans to its second virtual data centre in Germany, increasing its global footprint to 12 centres. In response to growing discussion around data privacy across the EU, the addition of Frankfurt on 1st December will satisfy demand from German businesses that want their data to stay in the country.

The combination of Interoute’s fibre network (67,000km across Europe) and its cloud platform means that businesses don’t have to worry about security or performance, because customers are connected to Interoute’s fibre in the ground.

According to the company, other large cloud providers - such as Google and Amazon Web Services - connect customers via the Internet, not via fibre, 6

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

and it is this combination of public and private cloud that makes Interoute VDC unique. Interoute currently has more European VDC locations than Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google or Softlayer.

Interoute says that, with virtual data centres in closer proximity, European developers and start-ups can access computing power, applications and storage on-demand, enabling them to build innovative applications in the cloud in a matter of minutes for as little as €0.02 per server, per hour.

Key benefits of Interoute’s VDC include the ability to scale up automatically, without having to ask, or pay for more storage, as well as users having the flexibility to be as hands on as you want - start–ups can manage their own IT infrastructure or use a totally hassle-free managed service.

The second zone in Frankfurt am Main, combined with Interoute’s advanced private and public networking capability, meets growing customer demand for secure cloud enterprise grade cloud computing inside German national borders, with complete data control and ultra low, in-country latency providing a secure, flexible and in-country resilient platform for all computing needs.

The addition of dual zone in-country capability to the Interoute Virtual Data Centre, available across 12 zones globally, means Interoute is able to meet the local needs of European businesses and also provide a global platform for growth and expansion. www.interoute.com



Fujitsu has announced the completion of its £34m network infrastructure project for Heathrow Terminal 2.

The four year partnership, which has seen Fujitsu implement the entire terminal’s integrated network system, providing the backbone which supports the terminals key systems that collectively help towards reducing queuing time and connecting passengers and employees throughout the terminal.

According to the company, the project has been beneficial to both employees and passengers. Employees can now work more collaboratively with the use of WiFi helping operational

staff to receive information in real time, something that wasn’t possible before.

This enables better communications and improved travel services across the terminal.

Passengers, meanwhile, can expect to see queuing time for check-in, baggage and security fall as the new technology allows passengers to check-in at any desk, instead of a desk designated to a specific airline.

The Fujitsu implemented infrastructure will also support key systems including security, airport operation and building management systems, self-check-in and bag drop systems.

Fujitsu says that its success with the project has opened the door for other contracts at Heathrow. The company was also recently awarded the Centre of Excellence (CoE) for private mobile radio (PMR) and Cellular projects across Heathrow. This means that Fujitsu will provide all radio and cellular requirements for the airport for the next two years. www.fujitsu.com



LINX selects Digital Realty as its first City POP in more than six

years Digital Realty Trust has announced that the London Internet Exchange (LINX) will be establishing a full Point of Presence (POP) in support of running its dual LAN infrastructure from Digital Realty’s Chessington data centre.

The Chessington facility is already home to a large community of cloud service providers and content delivery networks, a significant proportion of whom value the level of traffic optimisation afforded by an indigenous Internet Exchange.

LINX connects over 550 ASNs from 61 countries around the world, enabling more reliable exchange of Internet traffic, increased routing control and improved performance.

High quality data centres are critical to LINX’s on-going reliability, as they house the equipment, which LINX uses to operate the network upon which its members depend. www.linx.net

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NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

7

INTERNET OF THINGS

How the Internet is changing the networking model xxxxxxx

Understanding The Internet Of Thing

By Allen Storey, Product Director at Intercede

Revolution

Allen Storey explains how trust will be central to the future Internet...

A revolution, said Napoleon, is an idea that has found its bayonets. The coming revolution in Internet service provision – aka the Internet of Things (IoT) – may be a fully formed idea but, as far as most ISP customers are concerned, has not yet fully equipped itself with the arms required.

We’ve made a start, however connected TVs and smart meters are just two increasingly common examples of the IoT already in our homes.

But the true revolution, with its promises of self-driving cars and Internet-connected fridges, is still more of a concept than a reality both for consumers and businesses.

Yet the revolution is coming, and it will transform ISP business models far more significantly than the last Internet revolution of broadband. It’s difficult to gauge exactly when the IoT will reach critical mass, but ISPs need to be fully prepared for its coming.

With Cisco predicting that there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020, the opportunities for ISPs are obvious:

Trust me: I’m a mobile device that wants to connect...

8

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

with so many machines communicating constantly with each other, traffic levels on the world’s networks will dwarf even the deluge of data that we experience today.

Naturally, that means more money for those who provide the networks and connectivity. But the nature of the IoT will also open new markets and revenue opportunities for ISPs. One of the most important of these will be in the field of authentication and security, for as it stands little thought has been given to how to verify the identities of devices in the IoT.

The Internet of Threats

In all the excitement around the Internet of Things, far too little attention has been paid to the potential problems of having billions of connected devices.

If we have learned anything from the last two decades, it is that anything connecting to the Internet is potentially vulnerable to attack. We have learned the hard way that mobile devices, computers, networks and servers all

need a portfolio of protection, from anti-virus to firewalls, authentication to anti-spyware.

Yet this new generation of connected devices lack the protection needed to counter these coming threats.

The real issue is: how can we trust the identity of these devices?

Collectively, we must shake ourselves out of the mind-set that online security is simply about protecting data. With critical national infrastructure such as power generation and electricity grids, as well as hospital equipment and a host of other vital infrastructure, all being brought online, they become potentially vulnerable to attack from hackers or terrorists.

The growth in connected devices gives criminals access to greater and more diverse opportunities for extortion, theft and fraud, which are likely to be even more damaging – and potentially life-endangering – than today’s malware.

These attacks don’t just threaten to disrupt individuals and corporations.

Anyone who remembers the chilling Cold War drama `Threads’ knows that the interconnectedness and interdependence that makes modern society strong also makes it vulnerable.

The ‘connected city’ may bring great social and environmental benefits yet a successful attack on, for example, infrastructure control systems has the potential to wreak massive disruption, and even death, in its wake.

The potential of disrupting electricity grids, power generation, hospital equipment and a host of other vital infrastructure – all from the anonymous safety of the Internet – will surely be too tempting an opportunity for hostile nations and terrorists to pass up.

While the danger to national infrastructure is an example of how the Internet of Things can threaten a society, the vulnerability of individual citizens is no more minor. Criminals can attack high value targets such as your home security system or disable the alarm on your Internet-connected car; they could also intercept sensitive communications by posing as the intended recipients of the data.

In fact, the level of threat from the IoT is limited only by the attacker’s ingenuity. A criminal with access to a www.netcommseurope.com

gs target’s household devices could map out daily routines, and so work the most opportune moment to break into the house.

These are just some examples of the types of threats that lie in store if we do not give adequate protection to connected devices. Securing the Internet of Things is an issue for every player in the technology sector, but particularly for ISPs. It is their networks that will be abused to deliver these attacks, and their new revenues depend on end users’ trust.

Fortunately, this responsibility is also an opportunity, as ISPs have an important role to play in establishing trust in the digital identity of devices.

Trust me

The key to combating the threats inherent in the Internet of Things is to establish, with absolute confidence, that the devices, which connect to a network or to other machines, are the devices they claim to be.

Establishing the true identity of any machine or device is a critical element in preventing criminals gaining control of, or access to, a company’s network.

Anything that is Internet-connected but not authenticated can be compromised, and can provide a wealth of valuable data to criminals. One example would be the ability to monitor staff movements to track or target a particular employee for some nefarious purpose, from theft to blackmail.

The most important first step is to ensure that any Internet-connected device is properly identified and authenticated.

Combined with authentication that verifies each user or device that attempts to engage with it, embedded security provides an essential element of any defence against criminals seeking to exploit the Internet of Things.

It might seem like a massive oversight by the manufacturers of connected devices not to embed security into its products, but it is hardly surprising.

There is currently limited consumer demand for security on such items, mainly because there is little awareness of the potential dangers.

Meanwhile, adding security systems www.netcommseurope.com

necessarily lengthens the research and development process, delaying the time-to-market. This is not to mention the inevitable increase in costs that will either drive up the unit price presented to the consumer – which in many instances can be a key differentiator – or eat into a company’s profit margins.

Comms opportunities

The key to securing a world of connected devices is a big push to educate people, corporations and other organisations that, whilst the Internet of Things will radically change our lives in many ways, the biggest change will come in the way that we need to think about authentication and security.

This education should not be based on fear, uncertainty and doubt; instead we need a calm and collaborative approach to securing one of the biggest technological leaps forward in our lifetime.

The opportunities of the Internet of Things go far beyond the mere provision of device identity.

The technological revolution will enable services that we can only guess at today; such as the smart watch that constantly monitors glucose levels and transmits them confidentially to your doctor to devices that can monitor the productivity of dairy herds and moderate dietary changes to improve output accordingly. The key however is that this will only be possible if there is inherent trust in the security of such things.

Before they dream of the money they can make from a world of connected devices, vendors and ISPs alike must first turn their attention to embedding trust in the Internet of Things. Only then can they ensure that the revolution will not be jeopardised. www.intercede.com

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

9

CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE

xxxxxxx beyond the networking horizon Looking

Cost-Effective Future Proofing

By Allen Storey, Product Director at Intercede Reichle & De-Massari discusses how to future proof your network

Preparing for the future

In the world of data centres and office cabling, much is happening right now, and there’s a lot more on the horizon.

With so many new developments to take into account, how do you go about ‘future proofing’ your network?

Lets look at some ways to prepare for the future flexibly and cost-effectively...

Basic requirements

Due to social media, advanced business applications, ‘big data’, online transactions and portable connectivity data centres’ core networking demands are doubling every 18 months. Server I/O requirements are doubling every 24 months.

That means you need an upgrade strategy, which accommodates future changes. To keep a handle on costs, your strategic network upgrade path requires solutions that reduce installation time, downtime, energy usage and maintenance.

Pre-terminated fibre with very high density is one way of achieving this, by making rollout faster and less costly, and allowing fast reconfiguration, which reduces downtime.

Traditionally, data centres run a LAN Ethernet network for distribution and a SAN Fibre Channel protocol network for storage and back up.

These can be consolidated using the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol. This allows the use of just one set of equipment, technology and management tools, reducing Opex and Capex.

Good planning is central to an effective network...

10 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

Prepare for 100G

Cloud services are boosting inbound and outbound data centre traffic and server utilisation. Future proofing means looking at 40G as well as 100G. The current 100G standard requires 20 fibre cables and a complex MTP connector, which isn’t easy to splice.

This adds up to higher costs. IEEE 802.3 bm, the new second generation 100G standard proposal, specifies only eight fibres - the current standard for 40G. This requires less expensive cabling and a less complicated connector.

Supported distances (up to 150 metres) are shorter, yet sufficient for nearly all data centre requirements.

By investing in a state-of-the art 40G infrastructure which is also ready for first and second generation 100G, safeguards your short-term and longerterm investment.

Boosting your backhaul

Data centres, office and business services and telecom and mobile networks need far more bandwidth than current infrastructure can provide. Mobile networks need maximal backhaul and front haul capacity.

Often, in-house cabling is fast enough, but there’s no ‘next generation’ link with the outside world, for example to shift high volumes between data centres. By designing networks with maximum flexibility in mind, bottlenecks can be solved.

Once, data centres and office networks devoted sets of resources, with varying topologies, to one particular function or technology, but converging infrastructure provides enormous efficiency increases. Integrated computer pools and storage and networking resources are shared across multiple applications using policy-driven processes.

This approach brings vast efficiency advantages and lower costs whilst centralising IT resource management, consolidating systems and boosting resource utilisation.

Today, cables are increasingly rolled out early on during building projects, as part of the core infrastructure. Buildings increasingly

integrate IT infrastructure (servers, data storage, networking equipment and infrastructure management software) with, for example, camera systems, telecommunications, energy management, safety/fire and environmental control.

The number of network connections and wireless access points keeps growing due to the vast uptake of WiFi devices and new, more mobile and flexible ways of working. Sufficient wireless backbone and access points in the right places are required, as well as cabling that accommodate multiple users. Otherwise, available bandwidth becomes unusable, as it has to be shared amongst so many users.

Powering up

Ethernet no longer merely transports data, but also networks an ever-growing number of devices, which require power. PoE+ allows extensive device powering using data cabling whilst allowing long cable lengths.

An energy efficient Ethernet is also vital. The IEEE 802.3az standard reduces power consumption of physical layer devices (PHYs) during periods of low link utilisation. Part of the transmission circuit is put into low power mode when the link is idle and ‘woken up’ when required, without impacting data transmission.

Thinking ahead

What seems like overcapacity now is a necessity in a multi-user wireless environment. 100 Mb/s downlinks and Cat 5e cabling may often suffice today, but looking at the next generation of Wireless Access Points, this is not a future-proof solution.

If your choice of cabling doesn’t provide the performance you had hoped for it is usually too late to fix it. The up-front cost is just a fraction of what it would cost to retrofit cables and other system components, and avoids a great deal of disruption at a later stage. www.rdm.com

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NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 11

CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE

xxxxxxx How comms technology is continuing to evolve

Managing Power And Peformance

By Andy Stubley, Strategy Director, SysMech

Introduction

Andy Stubley explains the importance of power monitoring...

Communication technology has come an incredibly long way, in a very short space of time. For thousands of years we relied on smoke signals, drums and other primitive means. In the last few hundred years came semaphore, pigeons, telegrams and morse code.

Then for a relatively small period of our history, less than 100 years, the telephone conversation became our principle means of remote (and indeed local) interaction.

However, in the last two decades, communication methods on telephones have changed dramatically. The days when children would simulate a phone call with a piece of string and two coke cans are long gone.

Complexity

Communication technology is continuing to increase in density, speed, importance – and especially complexity.

Telecommunications companies now offer a whole range of diverse services; and for the future it’s expanding to incorporate other technologies such as: IPTV, video streaming and fibre to the home.

The norm for the communications market is no longer a simple reliance on peer-to-peer voice, with every user now having access to a variety of communication applications such as e-mail, SMS, video, fax, instant messaging and voice.

Every CSP (communications service provider) now needs to offer a range of

services, which drives the requirement for a broad range of supporting technologies.

Power is the fundamental requirement for all networks of any type, without power everything falls down. Increasingly, all supporting networks need to be managed in the same way – small cell, RAN, core, microwave, backhaul, IPTV and video.

Each type of network is different, but one fundamental requirement remains the same - every element of these systems needs power.

Power management on a financial scale is obvious; it’s an ever-growing operational expense that’s even more critical - it’s the lifeblood. And, within that, remote power and battery management is increasingly important as modern CSPs have ever more dense networks, to supply the data bandwidth now viewed as their key differentiator.

More density means more discrete and remote systems.

Power outages

As we saw in Northern Europe, last winter, despite vast improvements in technology, network operators are still experiencing many incidents of power outage; many of them long lasting and critical. In some instances, it was taking up to 24 hours to identify problems and recover network stability.

The UK is a mature and stable market for utilities, while many parts of Europe suffer from less reliable mains power but have much larger geographies.

This can be a huge problem for a CSP who needs to keep its base stations online to drive revenue from its customers. If it loses mains power, it has battery backup - but if it loses the battery backup as well, it has a massive remedial challenge and no revenue.

Turkcell

Power and performance in your hand...

12 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

For example, we’ve worked with Turkcell, one of the world’s top 10 network providers, with 32 million subscribers and thousands of remote cell sites in a very big country. The power to the communications network needs monitoring to ensure it operates

consistently, at full potential and delivers the best customer experience.

This requires a lot of time, resource, energy and money – and inevitably many inconsistent errors can occur.

One example of Turkcell’s network problems is evident when there’s a power failure at a remote Base Transceiver Station (BTS) and several different alarms are generated. Some big data applications, such as Zen from SysMech, can identify the underlying problem and determine what’s needed to take dependent action on the behaviour of the system.

Typically, there may be a power alarm that is automatically recovered by the power network. In this case Turkcell doesn’t want to scramble together a support team at great cost, but there are other cases where the power won’t recover and a team needs deployment.

There’s obviously a trade-off to be made, based on the incoming and changing data from the network.

Turkcell is now able to recover from network failures by correlating, in realtime, information from the network and identifying the root cause of the failure.

This means less alarms to investigate, quicker identification of, and recovery from, critical failures and increased service availability.

Conclusions

There should be no reason for a multiple hour delay to identify problems, if the following five areas are covered; visibility, a single network view, predictive analytics, an independent view and rapid response to change. With the key to covering these five crucial areas being big data and performance management.

Ultimately, telcos should be trying to manage the network - and power and performance in one system. They’re solving the same problem.

Analysing all data, from all sources, in one place, is essential in gaining a fully integrated and omnipresent view of the communication network. www.sysmech.co.uk

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13

CO O P IM NM I OEN NT

xxxxxxx How the Class system is now dead

Optical Fibre Cabling Futures

By Mike Gilmore, DIRECTOR standards@fia

Introduction

Mike Gilmore looks at the evolution of fibre optic cabling...

Those readers who are au fait with ISO/IEC 11801 and EN 50173 standards for generic cabling design will recognise the concept of cabling “channels” and “links” and the application of the term “Class” when referring to the requirements that apply to those channels. *Class has been applied to copper since the earliest editions of the standards and was extended to optical fibre cabling in 2001/2002. However, it has always been a bone of contention that the application of Classes to optical fibre was not directly equivalent to its use for copper - and was recognised as the best of a lot of worse solutions.

Finally, it has been agreed to remove the optical fibre Classes from the next generation of the standards - unless someone comes up with a better idea which fixes the problems of the existing solution.

To explain the fundamental problem with the optical fibre Classes we have to review the multiple functions of the cabling Classes. Its first objective was for each Class to define a performance envelope within which one or more network applications could be grouped.

If we look at the copper Classes, any application of Class D would operate over a Class D channel. As each Class (A to FA) is hierarchical, a Class D would also support applications of Class A, B and C. As new applications were developed we had to create new channel Classes such as Class EA to support 10GBASE-T.

optical fibre Classes were defined by attenuation and, indeed, by length.

We started with OF-300, OF-500 and OF-2000 into which the existing applications were grouped and for which there was a hierarchy with OF2000 applications being able to operate over OF-500 channels. So far so good!

However, the reader might be encouraged to ask why, if copper channels were not length dependent what made it necessary to use length for the optical fibre equivalent?

The answer is that the primary length dependent transmission parameter for optical fibre is bandwidth and it is very difficult to measure accurately for installed cabling. As a result the application standards bodies such as IEEE had never specified a requirement - instead they had specified how far the application would operate over an optical fibre of a known bandwidth. So OF-300 applications were those that were stated as being supportable over 300 metres.

Equally importantly, because the applications standards bodies had not defined bandwidth requirements, the Class of a given application had to be product specific - so 1000BASE-SX was a Class OF-500 application using OM2 50/125m optical fibre but was in the OF-500 group for the OM1 equivalent.

This is wholly contrary to the copper concept where the Class is component independent.

The second intention was for each Class to define a performance envelope to assess compliance.

Copper channels are assessed against a limit for each of the necessary transmission parameters e.g. a maximum attenuation 24 dB at 100MHz for a Class D channel.

However, optical fibre channels are required to be design-compliant i.e. the limit depends on the length and the number of splices and connections within the channel.

So although the performance envelope for an OF-500 channel is 3.25 dB, a channel of length 250m would not be assessed against this value - one would have to calculate the limit based on the length. The reason for this is to avoid the use of non-compliant components but this resulted in most designers ignoring the optical fibre Class concept completely because their implementation and acceptance rules had not changed at all.

Nail in the coffin

The final nail in the coffin has been the rapid reduction of, and the multiplicity, of maximum channel lengths using different optical fibre types. www.fia-online.co.uk

New Classes

On the odd occasion we drifted away from this concept by creating new Classes to reflect the then “state-of-theart” cabling. Examples of this were Classes E, F and FA. This resulted in Classes without an application mapping - but this it not a fundamental flaw of the Class system.

However, one critical feature of the copper Class concept was that the performance envelope was length independent - instead the performance envelope was defined by transmission parameters such as attenuation, NEXT and return loss. By comparison the 14 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

New optical fibre Classes in preparation...

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LANactive

Switch to the future

FTTO Active & Passive Solutions Nexans is pleased to announce LANactive, an alternative approach to structured cabling. Using fibre-to-the-office (FTTO) topology together with access switches installed near to the work place, it provides Ethernet services via standard copper based RJ45 technology to the device.

• Long distance transmission • Elimination of costly floor distribution • Reduced cable containment • Refurbishment with minimum disruption

The approach offers significant cost savings and other benefits in specific circumstances:

• Redundancy at user level

ncs.uk@nexans.com www.nexans.co.uk/LANsystems

www.netcommseurope.com

Global expert in cables and cabling systems NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 15

ENCLOSURES AND RACKS

How Siemon’s IcePack technology reduces cooling energy

Tapping The Power Of IcePack Introduction

Siemon’s new IcePack cooling technology saves power for Genesis

Genesis means ‘the beginning or origin of anything’ and this is a fitting title for the global oil and gas consultancy that recently created its landmark new headquarters overlooking St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Described as ‘the beginning of the future’ for this 25-year-old energy industry specialist, the offices will lead operations for its 16 sites around the world and provide innovative surroundings for up to 500 of its total global workforce of over 1,500.

For the upstream oil and gas industry, Genesis provides early phase engineering consultancy, full-lifecycle subsea engineering services and design of onshore and offshore projects.

The company’s expectations were high and they were uncompromising in choosing Siemon to deliver an innovative infrastructure that would provide the foundation for their future performance.

“Siemon offered a complete, best-inclass infrastructure, from the backbone to the desktop, with the best data centre products, including an exciting innovation in cooling. With network

Siemon’s IcePack technology - taking enclosures down to new temperature lows...

16 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

design experts ready to support us and a comprehensive 20 year warranty, it was clear that the value offered by Siemon went far beyond the superior performance of our chosen system,” said Stephen Golliker, Genesis’ global IT director.

St. Paul’s Courtyard

Whilst the new building in St. Paul’s Courtyard is historic, internally it required a modern, purpose-built facility with state-of-the-art IT systems and inspiring aesthetic design. It aspired to a high performance environment that would engender pride for its staff and create confidence for its customers.

Not only bringing together and engaging its own teams from disparate London offices, the new 55,000 square foot headquarters was also chosen to provide inspiring accommodation for staff of Genesis customers that reside within the consultancy.

This major office move offered the opportunity for a complete technology update and yet with clients on site and offices consolidating, the brief was for it to be executed with zero downtime.

Genesis’ thinking included scoping the demands for its new infrastructure: Firstly it required resilience, as the nature of its work means that any loss of service immediately impacts earnings and delivery. Flexibility and scalability were essential requirements, with Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop from day one, plus capability to run 10GBASE-T in the future.

Data throughput and capacity were also carefully considered, given the considerable file sizes of engineering drawings and plans routinely transferred. VoIP and video were priority applications to be supported with full tele-presence on site, plus HD video and VoIP to the desk.

With a demanding set of requirements for its IT investment to deliver, the first consideration was selection of suitable systems and suppliers. Siemon came highly recommended and, thanks to its complete high performance end-toend offering, it won the competitive tender to supply the complete network infrastructure for Genesis.

Best in class

According to Golliker, Siemon offered a complete, best-in-class infrastructure, from the backbone to the desktop, with the best data centre products, including an exciting innovation in cooling.

With network design experts ready to support us and a comprehensive 20 year warranty, it was clear that the value offered by Siemon went far beyond the superior performance of our chosen system.”

The Genesis building is organised over six floors and so its network plan included five server rooms and one data centre/communications room, connected by Siemon’s high quality OM3 fibre optic cable in the backbone.

Given the challenging installation schedule, the fibre selected for the data centre was MTP plug and play, which guarantees maximum channel throughput and offers 75 per cent faster installation than on-site termination.

With the requirement to support 10Gb/s, Siemon’s Z-MAX® category 6A F/UTP copper system was chosen.

This system combines consistent best-inclass performance, unparalleled usability and speed of termination, with security and robust noise immunity.

It provides the highest margins on all performance requirements for category 6A/class EA, including critical alien crosstalk parameters.

For its data centre Genesis ordered four thermally efficient VersaPOD cabinets, which uniquely offer Zero-U patching capability to optimise space usage and airflow.

IcePack systems

As a company that innovates and embraces innovation, it chose to equip each VersaPOD with Siemon’s new IcePack cooling doors. These rear door heat exchangers use passive liquid cooling technology and deliver a cooling capacity of up to 33kW per cabinet. www.siemon.com/icepack

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NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 17

STRUCTURED CABLING

Tapping the power of pre-fab technology xxxxxxx

Success For Pre-Terminated Networks

By Paul Cave, Technical Manager, Excel Networking Solutions

Introduction

Paul Cave examines the benefits of pre-fabricated networks...

Pre-terminated cabling systems have been around since the beginning of computing - well before the inception of structured cabling.

Early IBM System 36 and 38 computers, for example, used to be connected to their peripherals by way of factory terminated twin-ax assemblies very similar to the ones still used today for 40 & 100Gb connectivity within the data centre.

The use of pre-terminated solutions falls into a number of areas, one being data centres and the other increasingly used option is in commercial office fit-outs, as the project timescales are constantly being reduced by the competitive nature of the market.

We are now starting to witness the use of pre-fabrication within the construction industry. By that we mean not only the construction, but the partial fit-out of wall sections.

Data centres

This is the one area that is very competitive, not only the cost but also the delivery schedules required to satisfy the very quick turn-around of modern data centre deployments.

It is not uncommon for a data centre operator to want to turn an empty data hall into a fully functioning and

revenue generating suite in a matter of weeks - time is money, and as soon as the decision is made the operator – will want to start earning revenue.

Therefore the time pressure quite simply dictates that pre-termination is essential for the rapid commissioning of new data halls.

Copper pre-terminated cassettes have been traditionally restricted to Category 6 and below due to the potential problems of alien crosstalk. Individual keystone jacks are more commonly deployed for screened solutions especially Category 6A. One of the traditional drawbacks of copper is the density that can be achieved, especially within the main patching field. The use of traditional outlets and patch management bars every 2U can be very restrictive and waste a lot of space.

To get around this issue, manufacturers have come up with a wide range of angled options, from angled `V’ style panels, standard outlets mounted at an angle within a flat panel, an angled modular panel that houses a standard presentation outlet in groups of six etc.

Unique approach

Excel has come up with a unique approach by having the front

presentation of the jack itself at 45 degrees, this means the patch cables lie flat at the front of the panel with standard presentation at the rear, meaning the profiles do not need to be adjusted and the dressing of the cables within the cabinet can be optimised.

As can be seen from the main illustration, when a patching field deployed within a typical data centre – which is fully patched in a 45U 2post frame containing 960 outlets - almost 50 per cent more usage is achieved than by taking a traditional approach - all of which were pre-terminated and labelled off-site, then just plugged in and tested.

Whilst traditional termination of fibre is still used, increasingly using a fusion splicer within a data centre is mainly restricted to rectifying faults.

Almost all fibre assemblies are pre terminated whether that is conventional construction fibre that is terminated at both ends with SC or LC connectors, or more commonly used, MPO/MTP 12 fibre assemblies that are used as intercabinet links (trunk cables) which are then connected to cassettes housing the fan-out cables to LC presentation.

Each approach has seen a ‘stepphase’ in the time to deploy. Using conventional and fusion splicing pigtails within patch panels, can take days if not weeks, pre-terminated conventional fibre, can take days, whereas the time taken to deploy MPO/MTP can be measured in just a day or so, if not hours.

Commercial offices

Pre-fabrication makes life easier at the sharp end...

18 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

The completion of the handover of a project is critical, mainly due to the fact that the lease deadline of an end user client’s existing facilities typically have to be met to avoid the costly penalty of having to extend their previous lease by a further three to six months.

This situation is then compounded by protracted negotiations to get the best price.

It’s against this backdrop that the pre-termination for commercial office installations is becoming increasingly popular as the project timescales are being constantly shrunk.

Some integrators have even taken the step to invest in their own facilities www.netcommseurope.com

www.netcommseurope.com

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 19

STRUCTURED CABLING

to keep up with the demand. Whilst it is basically the same product set being used, there are a few key additions and techniques being utilised.

One key difference is the lengths involved, they are usually much longer, and if there is a concern about the accuracy of drawings or measurements provided, some minimise the risks by just pre-terminating the floor outlet end at the factory.

This approach is a two visit approach, to the floor locations. First stage is to ‘pull’ or lay the loom, usually from the floor location back to the SERs (Secondary Equipment Rooms/ Floor Distributors) at which point ‘the floor’ can be handed back to the main contractor for other trades, with the outlets or GOP (Grid Outlet Point) box bagged and coiled for safety under the raised floor and the termination of the other end can continue in the SERs.

consolidation cables in coordination with consolidation points that are used to service zones or service areas within a floor or building.

Consolidation points have been a building block within the standards for a long time however they have only recently started to come into their own due to the additional flexibility they provide in a dynamic office environment that undergoes a lot of moves and changes.

There is an increasing demand for conventional tight buffered fibre to be pre-terminated offsite. This approach not only saves a great deal of time, it may be essential due to the lack of power onsite for a fusion splicer.

The days of ‘glue and polish’ are gone especially with the lower losses of OM4 fibre - certainly we do not know of anyone who is currently attempting the manual approach for single mode.

Solid core

Pre-fabrication

Along with the solid core harness links used in the data centre we also see the use of longer versions of these assemblies being used as

Another area on the increase is that of pre-fabrication where complete sections of buildings are being constructed in a factory with all

Make

services are being ‘pre-plumbed in’ it used to just be the power and water but now complete walls for schools and hospitals are having all their services installed in a factory environment including items such as gas/oxygen and IT cabling.

The completed wall is then wrapped up taken to site by lorry and craned into position.

This means the time and resources required onsite are dramatically reduced. If everything is labelled correctly, the process takes a fraction of the time - and cost - required for a traditional installation, which perhaps explains the large number of construction companies that operate in the education and healthcare sectors who are looking to invest heavily in this approach.

Considerations

With all deployments of this nature, there are some serious pros and cons to take heed of one size does not fit all, however the pros certainly outweigh the cons.

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Pros: • Time saving • Cost saving • Less wastage, both packaging and cable off-cuts • Concentration of valuable resources • Pre-tested • Less failure onsite Cons: • Accuracy in measurement required • Lacks on-site flexibility for change in program

Pre-terminated benefits

Our observations suggest that, when used correctly pre-terminated solutions can bring a raft of benefits to both the installer and the end user.

It all comes down to money and all the pros listed above have a ‘cash’ value. Yes the assemblies have a higher

www.netcommseurope.com

initial cost as they include the factory termination time, however the savings go beyond this.

Time saving also enters the frame here, which in itself brings benefits of cost saving, as if you buy the assemblies pre-terminated you don’t need as many onsite engineers pulling cables in and terminating them for as long, saving on the labour bill.

Cost savings include all the other items of equipment that have to be hired, such as podiums and lifts, if the turnaround is quicker they don’t need to be on hire as long.

Then there is the key advantage of their being less wastage - importantly the installer is purchasing a more accurate quantity of cable, they are buying by the metre and not by the drum.

Concentration of resources leading to smaller onsite teams for a shorter time and subsequently a smaller labour bill.

Furthermore, if the assemblies have been tested in the factory sometimes means less testing onsite. As an example, Excel has one data centre customer who accepts the factory test

results for warranty purposes, and this has led to a reduction of testing times by as much as 75 per cent.

Conclusions

Pre-termination is not a fad, it is an increasingly popular way of delivering a project in a more timely and cost effective manner.

It should not just be confined to the major projects delivered by the large integrators, this approach can provide benefits for all sizes of project.

Excel Networking is investing and will continue to invest in both products and services that can support any level of project with many different variations of product presentation, panel to panel, solid core harness links, panel to GOP, Panel to CP etc. Including both copper and fibre, both traditional and MTP. www.excel-networking.com

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 21

D ATA C E N T R E S

xxxxxxx How Schneider Electric plugged into hydro-electricity

The Norway connection

By Knut Molaug, CEO, Green Mountain

Introduction

Knut Molaug explains Green Mountain’s approach to data centres...

With its first data centre located in a former NATO ammunition store deep inside a mountain next to a cold Norwegian fjord, Green Mountain has added a second hydro-powered highsecurity and green facility in Norway’s industrial heartland at Telemark.

Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, first worked with Green Mountain AS to build what is considered to be the ‘greenest’ data centre in the world. Uniquely, it uses free cooling from the fjord nearby, and the data centre utilizes 100 percent low cost, renewable hydro power. Schneider Electric handled all IT infrastructures on the project.

“Our aim is to be an important, cutting edge green data centre operator in the European market,” said Knut Molaug, CEO at Green Mountain. “We are achieving this goal amongst others with the help of Schneider Electric’’.

Recently Green Mountain launched its second data centre (DC2 Telemark) at Rjukan, a historic industrial site in the Norwegian highlands, and known as the city where the sun never shines during winter.

To meet pressing timescales, Green Mountain needed its second data centre

to provide predictable performance and efficient operations.

Norway - a data centre destination

Like a lot of Northern European countries, Norway is keen to emphasise to data centre customers the advantages of its abundant renewable energy supply, and the suitability of its climate for energy-saving free cooling.

In a recent report entitled `Save Up to 50 per cent on European Colocation

by Choosing the Right Location,’ Gartner detailed how companies can make significant savings in their Opex by locating some of their IT in the Nordics.

To illustrate the point using a case study, Gartner reported a 42 per cent hosting cost saving by splitting workload between London Docklands and Norway.

In addition to free cooling potential, electrical power in Norway costs up to 60 per cent less than the UK. Because there is an over capacity of supply from zero carbon emission hydro power stations, power pricing is predicted to continue to fall in Norway, and as a

consequence power pricing can be fixed for up to 10 years.

For businesses looking to control their costs and budget for the future, this ensures predictable Opex for costs that constitute 40 to 80 per cent of data centre operational expenses, namely power and cooling.

In addition, there are no CRCs or other carbon taxes levied on Norway’s sustainable energy.

Commenting upon Gartner’s confirmation of the cost advantages of Nordic facilities, Knut Molaug, Green Mountain’s CEO, said that he is pleased that a respected organisation like Gartner have confirmed what his company has been advocating for the last two years, namely that data centres in Norway offer very significant Opex savings over those in other regions.

“Furthermore, there is the important advantage of reduced carbon footprint,” he explained.

Green Mountain Rjukan

Working in close collaboration, Schneider Electric and Green Mountain AS designed DC2 Telemark to mirror its first site near Stavanger.

Rjukan is located in Norway’s

Norway’s greenest data centre - up and running in May 2014...

22 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

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D ATA C E N T R E S

xxxxxxx

Telemark region and the new data centre sits in an area famous for its industrial heritage. It was right here that Norsk Hydro built the world’s first fertiliser factories in the early 1900s in order to access the abundant hydro power supply.

The same low-cost hydro power is today running the new data centre.

With a pressing timescale driven by a customer’s requirements, the new data centre was finished ahead of schedule to complete the first phase of a multimillion pound investment to build a large ‘zero emission’ collocation facility.

The project was started in December 2013 and the facility was up and running by May of this year.

DC2 Telemark is built on a ‘brown field’ site with a 10 MW supply initially available. The next phases are planned with 4 new buildings and up to 25 MW total capacity.

The site is served by several large hydro power stations, located in very close proximity to the data centre and ensuring robust and low cost power.

Like the Rennesøy data centre, DC2 Telemark has a unique cooling source available from an adjacent water supply, which is first used for hydro generation in the mountain.

As the water exits the mountain at a consistent year round temperature near the data centre it is piped to a heat exchanger in the cooling station. It is then discharged into the river where the raised temperature of the water helps fish breed.

The DC1 Stavanger cooling solution (including cooling station, chilled water pipe work and pumps) is fully duplicated providing an N+N solution.

Because there are few moving parts (circulating pumps) the solution is extremely robust and reliable. Server rooms will have available N+N chilled water under the raised floor.

In row cooling will be installed to client specification using hot isle technology. Standard power density from 2-6kW m2, bespoke solutions can be accommodated up to 20 kW m2.

“The Rjukan site was chosen primarily for the availability of green power and free cooling. Rjukan is one of the cornerstones in Norwegian industrial history, and we are thrilled to 24 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

be a part of and strengthen this proud tradition,” says Molaug.

The robustness of the data centre’s multiple power supplies - together with the physical security of both locations together with their submission for Uptime Institute Tier lll certification - make them ideal data centre for Europe’s most risk-averse corporations.

A flying start

Schneider Electric’s recent acquisition of AST Modular, a leading provider of modular, secure and energy efficient data centre infrastructure, gave the project a flying start.

Because of the short time available to deliver the new facility, a decision was taken to leverage the advantages of a prefabricated and pre-assembled, modular data centre build. Schneider Electric’s capability made it possible to complete the data centre within a five month window.

“Norway, the order is a breakthrough for Schneider Electric as a supplier of turnkey data centres. Combining international and local expertise in our network, we could ensure that the data centre was built on time. Neither in Norway nor anywhere else in the world, are we aware of a similar build-out that has been delivered as quickly as this,” said Arild Bjørkedal at Schneider Electric.

“Since we opened our first data centre near Stavanger, we have found that there is a massive demand for security, power price stability, sustainability and scalability, so our plans include investments of £60M in the data centre In Telemark over the coming years’’ explained Green Mountain’s Molaug.

Norway and hydro power Norway has all it takes to build and run the greenest data centres in the world.

98.5 per cent of the country’s electricity derives from hydro-electric power and sustainability is a core value of the country.

As the largest hydro power producer in Europe, Norway is also known for its political and financial stability, government effectiveness, quality of

regulations, rule of law and control of corruption.

Green Mountain AS has a goal of achieving world class Power Utilisation Efficiency (PUE) and provides a PUE below 1.2 in a Tier III configuration.

Given the stable IT infrastructure, cooling and management solutions supplied by Schneider Electric, Green Mountain customers have the possibility of a consistently low PUE every hour of every day throughout the entire year.

This is achieved through the highly efficient cooling system and the efficient design of the data centre.

“The combination of our flexible, scalable and reliable solutions and the data centre’s unique location will provide an extremely stable power supply security to GM’s customers. For Schneider Electric, this is an important contract and we look forward to being a part of the development of the future data centres in Norway,” explained Arild Bjørkedal at Schneider Electric.

Connecting globally

Green Mountain currently has server rooms available from 100 m2 in size, with planned offerings to more than 1,000 square metres.

In addition, the site will offer bespoke solutions to its customers with power density, cooling options, security solutions etc., all delivered according to application requirements and made possible by scalable, flexible prefab solutions from Schneider Electric.

Connecting it to the outside world, DC2 Telemark has redundant fibre paths into the site (last mile), together with multiple independent Carriers in land paths, multiple high quality fibre channels from neutral carriers and multiple paths into European markets via Oslo.

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NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 25

TEST AND MEASUREMENT

How bandwidth is changing the network landscape

Easier Testing For Gigabit Complianc

By Alfred Huber, Technical Manager, Psiber Data

Introduction

Alfred Huber explains the need for network diagnostics...

Field-testing passive networks intended for later use as Gigabit networks can be a complicated, prolonged and costly business. By carrying out three simple tests - checking the bit error rate, signal to noise ratio and determining delay skew in a single session - you can check for suitability and cable quality.

In taking this approach, you can not only almost instantly find out whether the network is performing as it should but you can also track errors and build up a documentation database.

Today’s ever-growing bandwidth demands mean a vast increase in the number of network cables used for communication (data, telephone, coaxial, audio...) as well as building management (security, access, alarms...).

The importance of Ethernet is clearly growing and its role is expanding. As systems are increasingly linked together, and moves, adds and changes become more frequent, it is vital to ascertain whether individual cables and bundles are working in accordance with specifications and make sure there are no bottlenecks along the line.

This testing is more complex than it may seem at first glance. Installers are required to present ‘proof of performance’ documentation and perform pre-tests.

The IEEE 802.3ab 1000BASE-T standard gives minimum requirements on multiple test parameters for verifying Gigabit devices.

If network testing is late, inaccurate or incomplete, pretty much anything can go wrong - this can drive up the cost of the network.

Testing must be an integrated part of the design and rollout processes.

Connections are often separately checked for certification, qualification and verification.

That is to say: is the cabling system compliant to industry standards, can an existing cabling link support certain network speeds and technologies and is the cabling connected correctly?

A fourth common element is active troubleshooting. Of these, certification might be considered the most rigorous.

Based on TIA and ISO standards, these either ‘Pass’ or ‘Fail’ a measured connection.

Multiple tests

Psiber Data NetXpert 1400 - new comprehensive cable qualifier and network diagnostic tool 26 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

In practice, qualification is often the main thing, which needs to be tested in the field.

Operators and installers simply want to know whether a cabling network works and can support Gigabit bandwidth, not only whenever new networks are built, but also whenever existing networks are changed or extended.

Qualification can be tested by taking a few carefully selected parameters from the relevant transmission standards and using these basic tests to get valuable results.

However, if tests show up that a network doesn’t live up to expectations, it is handy to find out where the problem is and get an indication of what’s causing it - without having to test extensively on LF and RF parameters.

Short circuits, miswires and split pairs will all affect system performance - so identifying these is crucial to taking effective steps to remedying failure.

Checking for Bit Error Rate (BER),

Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and determining delay skew are common test methods, but by performing all three in a single session and cross-referencing the results, test accuracy is increased to a very considerable degree.

Most of the profession al test devices normally used for this are, however, very costly. You would need to carry around multiple expensive devices in sometimes very harsh environments.

Cost-effective testing

This is where NetXpert 1400 comes in.

This small, portable, rugged device can test for BER, SNR and delay skew but is some five times cheaper than other devices.

The unit has been designed specifically for checking smaller installations, such as SOHO networks, clinics, law firms and so on. Operation requires no special skills.

The cost-effective NetXpert 1400 allows installers and operators to quickly and easily find out whether their network cabling systems qualifies for IEEE 802.3ab standard compliant Gigabit Ethernet, and also enables troubleshooting of active networks.

A ‘Pass/Fail’ result indicates whether existing cabling link supports data rates up to 1Gbit/s.

Verifying links

NetXpert allows the user to verify whether cabling links will support a maximum data rate of up to 1Gbit/s irrespective of the category of the cables, patch panels, or outlets installed.

Performing standards-based tests with real data as per IEEE 802.3ab and bit error rate tests (BERT) the NetXpert 1400 tests the error-free data transmission up to 1Gbit/s.

Adding to this, parameters affecting signal quality can be displayed including signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and delay skew. Delay skew in a 4-pair cable indicates the signal time delay between pairs and can impact Gigabit Ethernet performance.

Continuity test results of all 8 wires and the shielding are displayed in wire map format in full colour while showing cable faults such as opens, shorts, miswww.netcommseurope.com

ce wires, and split pairs in a clear and easy to understand way.

Cable length and distance to the cable fault are determined using advanced TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer) and capacitance technology.

Network testing

Featuring a bundle of active network testing capabilities, the NetXpert 1400 assists you with verifying network configuration and troubleshooting networks as any moves, adds & changes (MACs) performed will require a renewed verification.

In use, the NetXpert 1400 verifies, when connected to a telecommunications outlet, if a link can

be established to the switch and which connection speeds are supported (up to 1Gbit/s).

The Ping test detects the availability of individual and lists of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and any user-selectable URLs. User can also choose from a range of other network tests, such as LLDP/CDP and VLAN discovery and comprehensive PoE tests, including a load test.

The full-colour touch screen and 4 additional buttons make the NetXpert 1400 easy to use while the high-resolution colour screen guarantees excellent readability in any environment.

Its rugged design is ideally suited for rough handling environments. Results

Get a better view of your fiber

can be saved in the NetXpert 1400 and detailed, full colour reports can be generated for documentation purposes.

Internally stored test data can be moved via USB Flash to a PC or tablet in PDF or CSF format and printed without special software.

Testing network links by combining three key parameters means accurate results with an easy-to-use, purposebuilt, portable and rugged device is the fastest, most cost effective way to verify whether cabling links will support a maximum data rate of up to 1Gbit/s. www.psiber-data.co.uk

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Europe +44 (0) 1582-433433 ©2014 Anritsu Company

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 27

NETWORK MONITORING

xxxxxxx A new approach to network monitoring

When The NMS Is Not Enough

By Roger Holder, EMEA Field Marketing Manager, Fluke Networks

Introduction

Roger Holder explains why Network Management Systems are no longer enough...

Organisations are becoming increasingly dependent on the performance of their critical business applications. These are continually developing to meet the changing needs of the business; new applications are created, new users and features added and new ways of accessing the applications introduced, such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).

However, no technology changes come without a price, and today’s complex applications put an increasing strain on the organisation’s network and server infrastructure.

Many organisations are introducing Voice over IP (VoIP) to reduce costs, but using the existing network to transport voice as well as data can significantly affect the performance of other business critical applications.

These changes, combined with user expectations of rapid response times, mean that the network infrastructure is no longer just the ‘plumbing’. It supports business-critical applications, provides the data on which decisions are made and facilitates communications with customers, partners, suppliers and co-workers, making it a strategic asset to the business.

Network management - now in the palm of your hand...

28 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

Any downtime or degradation in network or application performance will directly impact on an organisation’s bottom line.

NMS connections

Historically the network has been considered as a separate, welldefined entity, making it relatively straightforward to write tools to understand and analyse its performance. These fall into two categories: Network Management Systems (NMS) and packet capture and analysis tools.

Most NMS have been infrastructure focused, addressing device monitoring, capacity planning, configuration management, fault management, analysis of interface traffic etc. and ignoring the applications and data traversing the network. They do not perform analytics on application response time, TCP errors and other issues that impact applications.

To obtain more detailed information, the network engineer has to turn to complex packet capture and analysis tools. They require skilled and experienced engineers and are timeconsuming to use, as the result can be too much data – millions of packets to examine, displayed through different user interfaces.

Application Performance Management Systems typically support auto-discovery of all the applications in the network, providing transaction analysis, application usage analysis, end-user experience analysis, userdefined transaction profiling and the basic functions to monitor the health and performance of all configured application infrastructure assets.

However, if an application is running slowly they find it difficult to identify if the problem is application or network based.

Whereas separate systems were once sufficient to stay on top of problems, the increased interdependency of network and applications and cost of downtime means it is no longer enough to use a discrete tool and say `it’s not the network’ or ‘my servers are fine.’

These tools are not designed to manage the interplay between network

and applications environments, which needs to be understood and managed to optimise the user experience.

IT teams need to work together using correlated data to find root cause and solve issues quickly before they impact the business.

A new approach

In order to tackle the interdependency of network and applications requires complete visibility of the network across all layers, from the data centre to the branch office. This solution is termed AANPM: Application Aware Network Performance Management.

AANPM is a method of monitoring, analysing and troubleshooting both networks and applications.

It takes an application-centric view of everything happening across the network, providing end-to-end visibility of the network and applications and their interdependencies, and enabling engineers to monitor and optimise the end user experience. It does not look at applications from a coding perspective, but in terms of how they are deployed and how they are performing.

By leveraging data points from both application and network performance methodologies, AANPM helps all branches of IT work together to ensure optimal performance of applications and network. It helps engineers overcome the visibility challenges presented by virtualisation, BYOD and cloud based services and identify problems anywhere along the network path.

The technology also provides application performance data to identify when a user is experiencing poor response times and which application component is contributing to the delay.

This actionable performance data can be shared with the applications team to identify what led to the problem and which component needs attention.

In March 2014 Gartner published the first Magic Quadrant on Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD), which is also referred to as Application-aware Network Performance Management (AANPM).

Their research firm’s decision to www.netcommseurope.com

NETWORK MONITORING

develop a report on this new sector highlights its growing importance and emphasises how vital network and application performance management is to helping enterprises achieve their business goals.

Benefits of AANPM

An AANPM solution has a variety of benefits: End-to-end infrastructure visibility - it brings together key data points from network management systems (NMS) and application performance management systems, providing a single dashboard view and helping engineers monitor KPIs and track device performance and usage.

www.netcommseurope.com

Faster problem-solving – different IT teams can work together using common tools to resolve issues Improved user experience – AANPM enables teams to monitor all levels of the user experience and address issues before they become serious Enhanced productivity – by speeding up MTTR (mean time to resolution), AANPM reduces expensive downtime and improves overall quality of service.

Cost savings - an AANPM solution eliminates the need to use multiple tools to monitor the network and application infrastructure.

Improved infrastructure optimisation – AANPM enables engineers to identify poor performance and prioritise projects such as server upgrades, make the

business case for approval and verify the results.

Better business understanding of IT - AANPM helps executives understand the cost of running critical applications and the impact if they go offline, as well as the dependencies between critical applications and the supporting infrastructure For those organisations that find the traditional NMS no longer suitable a method for network monitoring, AANPM may be the solution. However, it is important to know what an AANPM solution looks like. www.flukenetworks.com/ instantvisibility

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 29

D ATA S E C U R I T Y

The firewall - an evolution in IT defences

Advanced gateways

By Ashish Patel, Regional Director - Network Security, McAfee

Introduction

Ashish Patel details the the birth and evolution of the IT firewall

This year marks the 25th year of the firewall. This time 25 years ago, when the Internet was in its infancy, dependence on computers for business and leisure was minimal compared to the landscape of today and smartphones - and tablets - were yet to make their mark.

The first computer virus for Microsoft Disk Operating Systems (MS-DOS) wasn’t developed until 1986, and the first Internet virus was circulated in 1988. After these core developments, the firewall was developed in response to impeding landscape threats in 1989.

Although the sophisticated next generation firewall of today is far removed from its early predecessor, the basic principle has remained the same – firewall security has evolved in line with the security threats and technology advancements of its era.

As hackers and cybercriminals continue to develop ever-more sophisticated means of infiltrating both enterprise and consumer technology, this 25-year anniversary clearly marks the beginning of the firewall’s next phase of evolution.

The birth of the firewall

Responding to the growing significance of the Internet and the threats posed, some of the first examples of firewall

implementation were within the military and financial service sectors. Back in 1989, the firewall consisted of simply blocking anything that was deemed a threat. Using packet filters, traffic was either given a ticket to pass, or blocked by the firewall.

It soon became apparent that the basic form of packet filtering would not be a practical security method in the changing technology landscape.

Early packet filtering was limited to examining the source and destination of packets, which was uncovered through studying the information in its header.

As such, stateful packet inspection was soon introduced, enabling the firewall to look at content within the application layer, as well as the addresses of the packets.

Proxy firewalls

Moving away from packet filtering, the second generation of the firewall came in the form of proxy firewalls. Proxy firewalls introduced a four-step process to security, which involved receiving a request from a client behind the firewall, sending the request to a server outside of the firewall, reading the response and sending the response back to the client.

The development of proxies enabled firewalls to take on the job of keeping track of all client requests and controlling information entering and exiting the network.

Proxy firewalls developed further with the introduction of the application layer gateway (ALG). Once packets hit the gateway, which held proxies for each application-level service, the gateway set up a separate connection. This set-up kept the application servers separate and hidden from potentially malicious traffic.

However, as the system demanded a great deal of memory storage and processor resources, subsequent slow processes could be frustrating for home computers – and extremely costly for enterprise users.

Stateful inspection Firewalls - still protecting multiple IT systems...

30 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

Stateful inspection was introduced as a means of reducing the resources and memory required to run the firewall

with the same level of security. As the name suggests, this technology kept track of the “state” of a connection, which may be active, new or even nonexistent. In addition, stateful inspection firewalls gathered the information from a connection and collected it into a state table.

As more traffic passed, the firewall became increasingly sophisticated, with these packets being noted to help define the new rule-set.

Moreover, stateful inspection ensured that only packets that have received a previous outbound request are allowed through, blocking out unrequested and potentially harmful traffic.

However, while important to block unwanted traffic, it is also critical that a firewall enables desired traffic to pass through to the network. As stateful inspection didn’t grant access to incoming requests from outside users, such as videoconferencing requests, additional technology needed to be implemented to overcome this issue.

Deep packet inspection

With the rise of illegal downloads, it became important to delve deeper into packet inspection – enter the rise of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI).

This technology not only examined the header and various layers of each packet, but also scanned and logged its contents.

This development enabled security systems to make sophisticated decisions about the safety of traffic, rather than relying on internal requests.

The intense level of inspection caused problems for some, who deemed such measures a breach of privacy.

However, for many the heightened security outweighed this issue, as the technology was able to recognise illegal downloads, block viruses from spreading and prioritise traffic to further enhance performance. It also enabled law enforcement officials to look for evidence in communications from suspected criminals.

When deep packet inspection was combined with the firewall, along with a number of other features, the unified threat management solution (UTM) was born. www.netcommseurope.com

A UTM describes a single appliance that combines various types of traffic filtering into a single device, such as the firewall, deep packet inspection, virus checking, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention and URL filtering – making management of the system centralised and thus simpler.

Advanced application gateways

In 2008, the term Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) was coined to describe the next wave of security. At this time the major development was the addition of contextual awareness – to help remove the potential threat of unknown

www.netcommseurope.com

applications, as known but unwanted applications are more easily governed by the enterprise.

Also known as application awareness, this advancement enabled networks to grant or deny access to resources based on sophisticated analysis around the context of the connection.

While the term next generation firewall suggests the most advanced form of security, the technology is very much a work in progress. In 2010 for example, the discovery of a new cyber threat known as Advanced Evasion Techniques (AETs) meant the firewall had to adapt to deal with new risks.

AETs’ unique ability to disguise themselves using rarely used protocol properties in unexpected combinations

allows them to bypass traditional firewalls. Hackers study enterprise networks for weeks or months, hoping to identify a vulnerability that will allow them access to desirable data using AETs. As such, firewalls need to enable network administrators to employ evermore sophisticated rules for access. www.mcafee.com

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 31

CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE

Cascaded fibre indexing

Building The Right FTTH Architecture

By Sam Leeman, Senior Manager Of Application Engineering for EMEA, TE Connectivity

Introduction

Sam Leeman explains the duality of network architectures...

Since construction and outside plant account for the majority of total network costs, getting the right fibre-tothe-home (FTTH) architecture has a major impact on the business case. The network architecture can also impact time-to-market, labour and training requirements, future upgradability, networking performance and customer satisfaction.

As the expectations and business plan for every deployment is unique, there is no “one-size-fits-all” architecture solution. Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of each helps in the selection process.

Centralised or cascaded?

The Passive Optical Network (PON) is the optical fibre infrastructure of an FTTH network. The first crucial architectural decision for the PON network is optical splitter placement.

A centralised approach uses singlestage splitters located in a central hub in a ‘star’ topology and typically offers greater flexibility, lower operational costs and easier access for technicians.

Centralised using FDH

This architecture centres on the fibre distribution hub (FDH) where every end user or building in the area is

represented. It makes very efficient use of the splitters, maximises accessibility, provides easier troubleshooting and accelerates turn-ups/reconfigurations.

As this architecture often uses spliced terminals, which offer flexibility in how a network is installed and at the lowest optical loss, they require much higher labour costs and additional time for deployment.

Almost every network will employ some combination of splices and connectors. For connectorised options, hardened connectors add some significant benefits. They are specifically designed for use in harsh environmental conditions and will speed up deployments while reducing labour and installation costs.

A fully-connectorised centralised approach using an FDH offers some attractive benefits, including speed of deployment, maximum long-term flexibility and future-proofing aspects.

Maximising the use of connectors instead of splices enhances the accessibility of the network. One ideal area for a centralised approach is where take rates are not guaranteed, but may increase steadily as the area is further developed over time.

Centralised using closures

In this architecture, the feeder cable from the central office is connected to a

closure at the fibre distribution point of the network. The closure performs as the splitter housing.

However, whilst an FDH leverages connectorisation as much as possible, the closure system is typically spliced together. Still, the closure remains accessible for adding splitters at a later time, so it’s possible to deploy the network for an expected take rate and add splitters if the take rate increases.

Additional closures can also be deployed downstream from the main closure to further extend the network.

Cascaded using closures

From the central office, the feeder fibre enters the closure and passes through the first splitter (see figures 1 and 2).

The output fibres then feed into smaller closures, or fibre access terminals, that are closer to the customer. At each smaller closure, a distribution fibre enters another splitter. The drop cables from each customer premise are then connected to the outputs of these splitters to complete the network connections.

The cascaded architecture with closures is typically spliced from the hub closure to the splitter inputs at the fibre access terminals. The feeder fibres are spliced to the splitter inputs and the distribution fibres are spliced to the splitter outputs. In the fibre access

Central office splitter relationships explained...

32 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

www.netcommseurope.com

e terminals, the distribution fibres are spliced into the splitter inputs.

Cascaded with fibre reuse

This architecture is based on a cascaded approach and is extremely fibre-efficient as it can be “reused”. The fibre reuse model is particularly effective in a large rural or multi-dwelling units (MDU) setting because all the components, including the fibre itself, are relatively small. The terminals or closures are also quite small, having minimal aesthetic impact to the area or building. It should be noted that the fibre reuse architecture can be significantly more difficult to design, engineer, document and service.

However, it is extremely efficient in terms of fibre usage, and equipment costs are lower.

Fibre indexing

Fibre indexing uses a fully-connectorised system and allows installers to use a cookie-cutter approach to build out the network.. The exact same components are “daisy-chained” together, limiting the need for custom cable assemblies or splicing.

The basic building block, which is repeated throughout the service area, includes a connectorised terminal, with a connectorised tail and connectorised single- and multi-fibre outputs. Whereas

The cookie cutter approach revealed...

traditional cascaded architectures require different terminals with different fibre lengths that require complex planning, fibre indexing uses a single configuration throughout the network.

There are several variations of this architecture, so it can meet the requirements of many deployment scenarios. By using the same components over and over throughout the network, along with less overall fibre, the network can be installed faster and with lower overall installation costs.

Fibre indexing offers several attractive benefits to service providers choosing a distributed architecture for their access network. Using the same terminal, splitters, fibre cable and adding cable

spooling technology makes a good case for fibre indexing in many access applications.

The addition of connectorisation whenever it makes sense reduces the need for more highly-skilled labour, further decreasing overall costs.

Ultimately, both cascaded and centralised FTTH architectures offer different benefits and disadvantages.

Getting your head around which work best for you will be the key to building the best FTTH network – and getting it right first time could significantly reduce cost and maximise the deployment. www.te.com

Central office - more complex splitting required...

www.netcommseurope.com

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 33

STRUCTURED CABLING

xxxxxxx Simplifying the networking selection process

Too Many Cable Choices

By Ken Hodge, CTO, Brand-Rex

Spoilt For Choice?

Ken Hodge explains the nuances of structured cabling system choices...

Dining out can be a challenge. Too much choice on the menu is as unwelcome as too little, and much the same distress awaits anyone faced with the task of selecting structured cabling systems. But there’s no need to make a meal of this because Ken Hodge, CTO of Brand-Rex, is here to simplify the selection process…

For thousands of smaller LANs (local area networks) there is unlikely to be a need for data speeds greater than the one Gigabits per second (1Gb/s) used by modern PCs and laptops during the cabling system’s lifetime.

For such networks Category 5e (sometimes referred to as Class D) is both cost effective and technically adequate.

Category 5e is also the ideal choice for short-term networks. For example when a company takes on a two or three year lease on a building for expansion, or during renovations so that staff can be ‘shuffled’ around. Think also of the great ‘Portakabin cities’ that appear on major construction sites.

These are rarely around for more than a few years.**-

Safe and sure

If you’re deploying a new network for your enterprise, it’s a long-term investment for let’s say seven to fifteen years. But if you don’t foresee the need

for data speeds over 1Gb/s in that timeframe then Category 6 is only a little more expensive and has what’s known as ‘headroom’ – effectively safety margin – compared to Category 5e.

The upshot of this is that it’s a safer long-term choice.

For ten years forward thinking network managers have been ‘futureproofing’ their networks by installing cabling networks capable of 10Gigabits per second (10Gb/s).

These were people who strongly suspected that their user communities would need 10Gb/s data speeds during the lifetime of the network. And they were right. Because now 10Gb/s switches are readily available, plus many servers have 10Gb/s interfaces and - following the release by Intel of its ‘onmotherboard’ 10Gb/s Ethernet chipset - I think that it will only be a short time before desktop PCs and Laptops sport 10Gb/s interfaces too.

Category 7 is effectively obsolete.

Category 7A is overkill in most situations and is looking highly unlikely to be capable of 40Gb/s, so it doesn’t offer the next ‘future-proofing’ option.

This leaves only one option for 10Gb/s –Category 6A (Class EA) which was designed specifically for 10Gigabit Ethernet.

Grab your shield

All of the cabling categories come in

two flavours – shielded and unshielded (UTP). So which do you need?

With Category 5e and Category 6 it is really a matter of personal preference.

Shielded is however technically superior wherever the site is electrically ‘noisy’.

When it comes to 10Gb/s Category 6A systems however, most users and consultants are tending towards the shielded option.

Thinner shielded cables are easier for installers and engineers to work with and they have immunity to electrical interference.

So, in the majority of cases, shielded is the safer option for 10Gb/s.

Data centre LAN

Avoidance of downtime is absolutely key – requiring the cables and connections hardware to have far higher physical and mechanical quality and reliability.

Transmission quality is paramount too.

And in the data centre everything is squashed close together so higher density solutions are essential.

Data centres also are the most demanding in terms of data speeds.

The need to transfer data rapidly between switches, servers and storage meant that in data centres, 10Gigabit speeds were needed long before the electronic interfaces for category 6A were available.

Other cabling systems and electronics were used, optics and twinax. For the very short distances – a maximum of 15 metres – twinax links cost ten times more than Category 6A. Now that Category 6A interface electronics are available, Category 6A is the preferred choice for all links needing up to 10Gb/s. Indeed it is specified in all of the data centre design standards* as the minimum level to use.

For speeds higher than 10Gb/s in the data centre LAN, the fibre options we’re about to discuss under the data centre backbone heading can be used.

Data centre backbone

Connectivity options can easily spoil the party...

34 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

At data speeds up to 10Gb/s, a fibre link consists of two fibres regardless of whether you are using single-mode or multi-mode.

But as we move to the higher speeds www.netcommseurope.com

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NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 35

STRUCTURED CABLING

xxxxxxx

needed by many servers, for the ‘aggregated’ traffic between switches in the data centre and out to the wide area networks (WAN) this changes.

Single-mode fibre can carry up to 100Gb/s (potentially faster) using only one pair of fibres per link.

But the standards, which have been developed for multi-mode fibre, require eight fibres per link for 40Gigabits and twenty fibres per link for 100Gb/s.

You might assume from this that one pair of single-mode fibres would be the best solution since it will work from 1Gb/s right through to 100Gb/s without any modification. And indeed it is the most elegant solution from an engineering perspective.

But of course Murphy’s laws still apply – and the cost of 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s opto-electronics for singlemode are, and seem set to remain, more expensive than the multi-fibre multimode opto-electronics for 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s.

Unless you decide that you can afford to go for the technically elegant twofibre single-mode approach - do you: (a) Install just two multi-mode fibres per link for 10Gb/s then take these out and replace with eight or twenty fibres per link when you upgrade the active equipment to 40Gb/s or 100Gb/s? (b) Do you install eight or twenty fibres per link now but just use two now?

Or (c) find some alternative that gives a planned migration path without disruption and downtime?

There is also an issue of connector types to consider. Currently the favoured fibre connector for data centres is the high density ‘LC’ type.

For eight or twenty fibres then a multi-fibre connector type MPO (multifibre parallel optics) is needed. The

basic MPO type has a higher insertion loss and doesn’t really support multiple patching point topology needed for full flexibility.

Whilst MPO comfortably supports 2-connector links a very high performance variant of the MPO, called the MTP® connector, – allows the user to configure between four to six connector pairs in the network, allowing cross-connect topologies to be used.

There have been a few products launched recently which properly embrace the need for networks to be migratable from 10 to 40 and possibly 100Gb/s.

One – called ‘Base-8’ because of the 40Gb/s need for eight fibres – simply formats LC connectors together in physical groups of eight – at both ends of the links.

As soon as you need to connect some 40Gb/s equipment instead, a new patch cord with eight LC connectors at one end and a multi-fibre MTP connector at the other will allow the connection of a 40Gb/s server or switch port. So in seconds you’ve transformed from 10Gb/s to 40Gb/s.

Other modular alternatives exist like those shown in the diagram – which allow fibre patch-panel modules to be changed quickly from LC to MTP types when the need for 40Gb/s arises Also allowing lots more 40Gb/s circuits to be installed within the same patching space.

Enterprise backbone

Historically, fibre was the only real choice for enterprise backbones. But a lot of enterprise backbone links are under 100 metres – and for these, 10Gb/s over Category 6A copper cabling will now become a cheaper option.

For networks with Category 6A – allowing 10Gb/s to the workstation - it follows that the backbone links

Brand-Rex is a leading supplier of copper and fibre optic based network infrastructure solutions for enterprises, data centres and extreme environments.

As well as manufacturing best in class products and systems, BrandRex has exemplary environmental credentials and is the first company in its sector to be verified carbon neutral according to PAS 2050.

36 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

will need to operate at faster speeds to accommodate the aggregated traffic.

For these, multi-mode fibre with the Base-8 and LC to MTP interchangeable patching modules will be one of the best options.

Eights into twenty

You may have noticed in both data centre and enterprise backbone sections I didn’t talk about the upgrade to 20 fibres for 100Gb/s.

That’s because if you need 100Gb/s in the next two or three years then 20 fibre multi-mode or 2-fibre single-mode are your only options and you might as well install them straight away.

But - and this is currently only a maybe - it is looking possible that on a five year time horizon 100Gb/s could be re-engineered to an eight fibre Base 8 format. In which case the same eight fibres could carry 40Gb/s or 100Gb/s giving a great future-proofing capability.

All this means that installing eight or planning migration to eight is possibly the most cost/future-proofing balances for the majority of new enterprise backbones.

Conclusions

Structured cabling is decidedly ‘horses for courses’ and not ‘one size fits all’.

And while I hope I have helped to demystify the topic and bring you right up to date there is no substitute for getting a highly knowledgeable consultant or one of the top-tier manufacturers to help you make the best choice.

This is because, at the end of the day, your company will have to live with your decision for a great many years. And the cost-plus disruption of having to re-cable too early is massive.

Headquartered in Glenrothes, the company’s achievements were recently acknowledged when it was announced as a winner at the 2011 VIBES (Vision In Business for the Environment of Scotland) Management Awards. www.brand-rex.com

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The UK’s leading manufacturer of Datacentre Enclosure Systems We offer unrivalled flexibility whilst quality and value for money are guaranteed.

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+44 113 2320555 www.rackcabinets.co.uk sales@ orionuk.biz NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 37

ENCLOSURES AND RACKS

xxxxxxx How data centre space can be optimised

When Form Meets Function

By Mark Hirst, CTO, Cannon Technologies

Introduction

Mark Hirst discusses the challenges of data centre layouts...

Today’s data centres come in all shapes and sizes, which is why free form aisle cocooning’s ability to offer a flexible and highly effective solution is proving increasingly popular when it comes to overcoming design and implementation challenges.

For the world’s largest organisations, constructing a data centre is simply a case of buying land in a suitable location and building a bespoke facility on it.

However, for most others the process involves the utilisation of existing space that was probably not originally designed for such a purpose. This brings with it a number of challenges to ensure that any installed equipment performs to the highest standards under the best possible operating conditions.

Factoring in

Achieving optimum space utilisation in a data centre is where things can get particularly tricky. For instance, while it might be possible to configure 200 fully populated racks and cabinets in 300 square metres, it should be remembered that a similar amount of space would also be needed to house items such as plant, UPS, switchgear, chillers and generators.

A modular approach can reap dividends...

38 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

A building’s layout can be an issue too. While installations in basements and lofts can be particularly problematic, they are not the only areas to have integral features such as low ceilings, beams, pillars, doors and non-parallel walls that must be designed around.

In addition to these challenges, it is almost always necessary to build in room for expansion, so space to carry out moves, adds and changes (MACs) must also be factored in from the outset, as a failure to do so could prove costly both in terms of time, money and effort.

The ability to deal with these issues comes down to good planning. Whether configuring a new facility or retrofitting equipment into an established data centre, it is vital to carry out a comprehensive site survey to establish what can feasibly be achieved.

Although accurate information means that operational effectiveness can be maximised and the right products installed at a price that falls within the budget, some data centre owners and managers are reluctant to provide relevant information through fear of a confidentiality breach.

Whilst this is a legitimate concern, a data centre that is either over-specified or under-specified is undesirable, so the key is to be as precise as possible at the

planning stage and be realistic about potential growth – even if it means sharing information under a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), or similar.

Sealed unit

An increasingly popular way of configuring a data centre infrastructure that addresses all of the above issues, and more, is free form aisle cocooning.

This advanced technology unites cost effective cabling and airflow system containment to create a single integrated solution that also has a low energy footprint. It supports an end-to-end edge beam infrastructure, supporting overhead panels above the aisle without being individually dedicated to any one rack.

Whatever the particular dimensions of a data centre, climate and temperature will certainly need to be controlled. Recent research from DCD Intelligence found that the number of high-density cabinets in servers – those over 10kW per cabinet – as a proportion of total cabinets, increased by 8.5 per cent globally between 2012 and 2013 to 15.2 per cent.

To deal with climate control, most aisle cocooning systems utilise cold aisle containment, which encloses the cold aisle and prevents the mixing of cold air and hot exhaust air. It ensures that climate control units are placed in a way that keeps the airflow path as short as possible, improves the efficiency of the computer room air conditioning (CRAC) system and limits the energy it demands, resulting in an overall power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of as low as 1.1.

Within row cooling (WIRC) units can also be used to offer close-coupled airflow, negating the need for long ducting runs or large powerful fan systems.

When used in a free form aisle cocooning system, cold air emitted from the floor is sealed in and cooling air can only exit through the equipment for which it is intended. What’s more, components such as overhead panels and aisle end doors are fixed to the cabinet bay structure alone and not connected to the room structure.

This means that MACs can be www.netcommseurope.com

Mafi Mushkila, the leading provider of data centre services, offers a wide range of rack mounted and floor standing load banks and server emulators designed to test electrical and cooling systems in a controlled environment.

In order to ensure that new data centres can handle the demands placed on them and keep on delivering for the duration of their operational lifespan it is necessary to thoroughly test the infrastructure before it goes live.

Carrying out these tests with servers can be costly and potentially damaging to the equipment which is why heat load banks and server emulators are so popular with data centre operators around the globe.

The Mafi Mushkila rack mounted single phase emulator is available as a 2kW variant or as an impressive 3.75kW unit. One of the most powerful rack mounted heat loaders on the market, the 3.75kW emulator boasts a 230v 50Hz single phase input, a power input of 3.824kW, a heater power of 1.875kW/3.75kW (switched) and an

airflow volume of 241l/s. A rack mounted single phase 2kW load bank is also available and, as with all rack mounted systems in the range, can be fitted to any industry standard 19 inch rack, occupying 3U of space.

Mobile racks are offered in 12, 16 and 30U sizes and allow the load banks and server emulators to be installed in various configurations to meet capacity, density and rack layout requirements.

Mafi Mushkila floor standing single phase 2kW and 3kW units or three phase 9kW, 15kW and 22kW offerings are ideal for use in data centre spaces, particularly colocation facilities, where racks are often not installed until the customer makes a final decision on their infrastructure needs.

All units can be supplied on a rental only basis or as part of a managed load testing service package which offers installation, management of the load banks for the duration of the testing period and an uninstall at the end.

Tel: +44 (0) 1243 575106 or +44 (0) 8703 832339 email: davewolfenden@mafi-mushkila.co.uk web: www.mafi-mushkila.co.uk

www.netcommseurope.com

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 39

ENCLOSURES AND RACKS

xxxxxxx

A thorough site survey makes for easy planning...

carried out uninhibited – even the swap out of complete racks and cabinets can be completed in a live, fully operational data centre, with no disturbance to cable raceway.

Mix and match

Being able to cocoon an aisle is important, as all data centre environments change over time. Just as the type of hardware used has evolved, so too have the cabinets and racks, and this means that a facility might now have products that are a mix of different depths, widths and heights.

Also, although well designed for internal cable management, some manufacturers’ racks and cabinets tend not to work so well when sited alongside server cabinets. This inconsistent approach can play havoc with even the best cooling system.

It can be a similar story when it comes to cabling and pipe work. What used to be controlled and well ordered might now be in a state of unmanaged cable chaos.

Where legacy cabinet installations exist, free form aisle containment technology provides a cost-effective retrofit solution that maintains the integrity of the cold aisle, even when different makes and models of cabinets are in-situ. Making an aisle cocooning solution work with multiple vendors’ cabinets and needs careful design and consideration of possible ‘day 2’ changes – something that usually requires the help of experienced experts.

40 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

For example, cabinets with raised feet for levelling can create a backwash of air underneath them, while there may be gaps either down the sides or where there is missing equipment. Blanking plates should be used to cover these as part of any best practice policy and there are a variety of quick fit blank panels available, with no tools required to fit them.

A retrofitted aisle containment system involves fixing the ceiling edge beams to the top of the cabinets, installing ceiling panels, fitting air skirts under and between the cabinets if necessary, and attaching the doors at both ends of the aisle. This ensures that the cold air emitted from the floor is sealed in and remains unaffected by hot exhaust air, while the cooling air can only exit through the equipment for which it is intended. This, in turn, has both short-term and long-term operational expenditure advantages.

Your flexible friend

As previously stated, the true benefits a free form aisle containment solution can only be fully exploited after a thorough site survey has been completed and the design and installation team has a good understanding of the future plans for a facility. Once this has been completed, free form aisle containment can be successfully applied to almost any environment.

Cocoons can be configured to be anything up to 52U in height, meaning that they will able to accommodate the largest server cabinets. Conversely in buildings with lower ceilings, they can be specified accordingly. When it comes to retrofitting, it always helps if the cabinets are the same heights but in reality this is rarely the case, leading to ‘Manhattan skyline’ type appearance.

Although a height difference of a few centimetres can be managed easily, a difference of a metre or more is increasingly common in older environments. The development of specially designed ceiling and side panels create a uniform height both sides of the aisle and provides a snug fit, which maintains the effectiveness of a cold aisle.

Side sealing panels when used in

conjunction with secure integrated cable trays and brush sealed raceway bridges add another level of protection to the infrastructure. It is also possible to use these panels around pillars and assimilate them into the overall design with minimal loss of floor space.

If this is carried out properly it will result in a seamless system where the various configurations work perfectly together, rather than an ineffective ‘cut and shut’ installation.

Protect and survive

Dealing with the problem of safety and security within a free form aisle containment solution has now been addressed in a number of innovative ways.

Automatic self-closing doors with keypads or biometric access control not only stop unauthorised access but also help keep the temperature in the cold aisle stable. Similarly, there is a growing trend towards high efficiency light emitting diode (LED) based occupancy lighting, which automatically turns on an off when required and can even be controlled remotely through a data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) system.

When it comes to fire protection, active overhead panels open automatically in case of fire, allowing overhead fire suppressant to enter into the aisles, or smoke to be extracted.

Meanwhile, the whole cocoon can be monitored on a 24/7 basis with a dedicated service panel that can house CCTV cameras.

Whether just a few cabinets or hundreds are required, free form aisle containment offers a flexible, scalable and secure solution that is perfect for use in a wide range of environments due to its ability to negate some of the common problems encountered when integrating third party equipment.

However, to maximise the potential of this technology, it is advisable to carry out an extensive site survey, understand any constraints, and choose a partner that can take these into account and configure the best possible solution. www.cannontech.co.uk

www.netcommseurope.com

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CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE

How ISPs can embrace the need for speed

Overcoming The Fibre Challenge

By Shayan Sanyal, CCO, Bluwan

Introduction

Shayan Sanyal discusses the fibre changes taking place in the national infrastructure...

The importance of a broadband connection in the digital age cannot be denied. Many people are now seeing simple Internet connectivity as the fourth utility.

The technology has the ability to not only drive business growth, but also increase the GDP of a country, and provide a better quality of life to users.

As a result, there has been significant global investment in the rollout of fibrebased broadband access over the last few years. The UK government has so far invested £1.2 billion in the rollout of superfast broadband and has proposed an additional £300 million of taxpayers’ money to enhance coverage by 2015.

Similarly, the US government has

invested $30 billion per year since 2005 into deploying broadband across the country, and Google has recently spent $84 million to build a fibre network that connects just 149,000 homes in Kansas City.

Increasingly critical

Despite this ongoing investment, there are still questions around how broadband will be rolled out to areas that fibre cannot reach - specifically rural areas where some communities have yet to enjoy any commercial broadband services.

It’s also becoming increasingly critical for high-density urban areas to have the capacity needed to allow business

to flourish. However, trenching fibre in these areas can cause considerable physical disruption and in many cases simply isn’t possible.

If broadband Internet access is truly the fourth utility, then ISPs must find solutions to the challenges they are currently facing, as they look to roll out fibre optic broadband infrastructure in both urban and rural areas. Critically, they must find a way to balance the need for greater capacity and bandwidth with the cost of rolling out fibre and the price point offered to users.

A recent Ofcom study revealed that the quality of broadband connections still varies greatly according to where you live in the UK, even within urban areas.

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42 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

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Despite the fact that most of BT’s commercial deployment of superfast fibre broadband is concentrated in urban areas, Ofcom found that users in cities and towns are still putting up with `very low’ broadband speeds.

The study also discovered that some users are receiving less than 2Mbps and that people in Cardiff and Inverness are twice as likely to be on a slow connection than those in London or Birmingham.

Furthermore, businesses in areas such as the Silicon Roundabout or Tech City in central London – zones touted by the government as `tech hubs’ par excellence - are reliant on digital technology.

Many organisations in these

zones work in new digital-based communications, marketing and entertainment sectors, and a decent connection to the world is essential.

An affordable but poor, or good but expensive, broadband connection can really hamper their ability to perform and scale. These new fast growth companies are focused on creating defendable data assets, working with distributed teams across the globe, and need fast, reliable, low latency connections. Fibre seems to be the only solution to enable such scalability.

However, deploying fibre is expensive and incredibly time consuming to roll out, regardless of the potential revenue opportunities. The connection speeds and capacity required for businesses is

often considerably higher for domestic users but the time and effort required to roll-out high capacity fibre means that many ISPs must pass the cost on to their customers in order to meet return on investment criteria.

As a result, ISPs have become used to charging higher line rental rates but this ultimately makes the price point offered to businesses very high compared to the cost of consumer broadband. For small companies, start-ups and those in early growth phases – the engines of our new economy – broadband rates in the thousands per year range are simply not affordable.

Unless ISPs find an alternative to fibre access, they risk their entire business model collapsing. For example,

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NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 43

CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE

xxxxxxx

a company in a business park in Greater Manchester four-minutes walk from a cabinet enabled with fibre optic broadband, could be charged a typical installation fee of £500 and an annual line rental of £5,200 plus VAT for a relatively slow 10 Mbps connection.

This cost is simply too expensive for small businesses and start-ups who need high bandwidth, high-density services at a sustainable return on investment.

In order for ISPs to provide affordable high bandwidth broadband

Conclusions

Connecting rural and urban areas is just the first hurdle for ISPs. As the demand for rich video content, cloud computing and other high bandwidth activities increases, the need for high capacity broadband is only set to grow in both environments.

The need for capacity is crucial. ISPs can certainly invest in fibre and build a next generation fibre network. However, with more capacity, ISPs could support

Easy connectivity - when you have the resources...

to businesses in urban areas, they must overcome the deployment challenge that fibre poses, particularly disruption caused by the trenching of fibre and the cost of roll out.

Gigabit cities

Deploying into both rural and urban areas is an ongoing challenge for ISPs. Despite claims that the UK government’s nationwide broadband rollout is ahead of schedule, and that thousands of homes and businesses up and down the country are already seeing the benefits, there is constant criticism that much like urban speeds, rural broadband speeds on a global level aren’t up to scratch.

While governments in the UK, Europe and particularly in the US have been distracted with the potential of superfast broadband (24Mbps) and gigabit cities, large areas of the country remain underserved.

Last year financial analysts at Bernstein Research estimated that in the US a national Google Fibre roll out that passed only 15 per cent of US homes would cost upwards of $11 billion a year for five years, on top of the $84 million already invested.

This further highlights that deploying a fibre network is a costly and complex process. Businesses and governments need to get back to basics, invest in infrastructure and focus on connecting the last mile before getting excited about higher broadband speeds and gigabit cities.

44 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

more broadband connections over a single fibre and deliver new services at a much lower cost to the customer.

Furthermore, by providing higher bandwidth services, ISPs can take advantage of the businesses and organisations that need this connectivity in order to flourish.

Extending the fibre network is a complex process. ISPs need to find a way to provide high capacity access in a way that is affordable both for it to deploy and for the price point offered to its customers. Fundamentally this requires a shift in the economics of the fibre deployment.

In order to make the fibre roll out financially viable, ISPs must be able to support multiple connections through a single access point, all at sufficiently high capacity. This challenge is however not exclusive to urban areas; ISPs are also facing this problem in multi-occupancy business properties, as well as in rural and residential areas.

In order to meet the economic challenge, ISPs need to extend the reach of existing fibre, with fibre-like capacities. This is possible by deploying wireless technology into areas that would otherwise be hard to reach when trenching fibre.

A point to multipoint solution is one such technology that can handle up to 20 connections and still provide more than 125 Mbps capacity to each customer. Connecting a small to medium size business to fibre like speeds could be 50 per cent less expensive using these new technologies, dramatically shifting the economics of delivering very

high throughput connectivity.

There has been significant investment in the roll out of fibre broadband across the globe, as governments and businesses have recognised the economic and social opportunities that a viable Internet connection can provide.

It is, however, vital that ISPs find a balance between the cost of deploying the fibre and the price point that is offered to users. Whether it is consumer broadband or broadband for enterprises, rural or urban areas, the challenges are simple and it boils down to connectivity at an affordable price point.

As our reliance on the ‘fourth utility’ continues to grow, ISPs must invest in the right technology and infrastructure that will be best for their customers and provide the capabilities they need, and only then will they overcome the current challenges and see the benefits the ‘fourth utility’ can offer.

About Bluewan

Bluwan’s carrier grade multi-gigabit wireless transmission technology is billed as allowing service providers to increase the throughput and capacity of existing networks.

Operating in the 42 GHz spectrum band, the wireless technology can be deployed primarily for mobile backhaul and wide area broadband access applications.

Offering fibre-like speeds and capacity, its compact radio antennas allow service providers to deploy multimedia services at a fraction of the cost of deploying optical fibre, whether to individual cell sites or to customer premises.

Bluwan’s solutions are the culmination of several years of R&D performed in collaboration with the Thales Group in the defence and aerospace markets.

The company is headquartered in Paris, France, with additional offices in London. www.bluewan.com

www.netcommseurope.com

FUTURE PROOF YOUR BUSINESS

...AND SAVE MONEY WITH OUR WISENETIII IP SOLUTION At Samsung we understand that the decision for when and how you migrate to an IP security solution is a complex one, influenced by many factors. Our new range of WiseNetIII network cameras have both an analogue and IP output, as well as onboard SD card recording. This gives you complete control and flexibility to make the right decision to suit your business. Integrate WiseNetIII onto an existing analogue system, whilst recording Full HD onto the SD card, or take advantage of the dual output and record locally to your analogue recorder whilst simultaneously viewing remotely utilising the IP output. You don’t have to throw away the investment you made in your existing equipment – helping to improve Total Cost of Ownership!

Contact us for further information www.netcommseurope.com

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W www.samsungsecurity.co.uk/WiseNetIII NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 45

CASE STUDY

xxxxxxx A better digital wireless system for London Heathrow

Commercial DMR Service Takes Off A

By David Read, Business Development Director, Affini Technology

Introduction

David Read explains the benefit of digital wireless at the new LHR terminal...

As airwaves have become more congested, analogue private mobile radio (PMR) has started to reach its limits. Organisations with a requirement for business-critical and safety-critical communications have sought a digital protocol for radio communications that improves spectrum efficiency and enables features in addition to traditional voice over radio.

Aviation provides a perfect example of the need for business-critical and safety-critical communications.

Commercial aircraft only make money when they are flying, so airlines place a premium on safe, efficient turnaround. Clear communications between ground handling crews and airlines are crucial for ensuring that deboarding, onboarding and manoeuvring of aeroplanes and airport vehicles are carried out as quickly and safely as possible.

Affini serves no less than 20 UK airport operators and has been delivering radio, wireless, mobile and cellular communications and IT services at London Heathrow for more than fifteen years.

LHR T2: state-of-the-art digital radio assists...

46 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

The company has more than twenty years’ experience in delivering end-toend critical and real-time, commercial wireless and ICT solutions to the UK’s largest organisations.

Working into the UK’s largest consultant engineer, WS Atkins, Affini was awarded the contract for the detailed design of the Internal Building Distributed Antenna System (IBDAS) for T2.

The IBDAS provides a common platform that allows all radio and cellular operators to provide coverage much more consistently and efficiently throughout the terminal.

During the consultation phase, Affini’s specialists worked with Heathrow Airport, the Police, the Fire service, and all of the mobile operators, supporting Atkins in working with more than 40 organisations at each stage of delivery.

The size of the terminal, the material used and the unusual shape of the roof - designed by Norman Foster - required careful cellular, wireless and radio signal modelling, to ensure optimal performance and coverage throughout the terminal.

As part of the installation and commissioning process, the company tested and measured signal coverage and used CAD and mathematical models to provide reliable, repeatable test data, providing the most realistic representation of how the integrated communications system worked in a live environment which was subsequently double checked by manual testing of the installed system using signal injection and walk testing.

To support future communications requirements, Affini has also undertaken the commissioning and testing for the airport’s own 4G/LTE infrastructure.

Terminal 2

When London Heathrow announced its plans to open the new Queen’s Terminal at T2, several airlines had to make plans to move their operations.

Ensuring consistent communications was a key priority.

The opening of Heathrow T2 was the catalyst for Affini to use the Motorola MOTOTRBO Connect Plus DMR platform to add an airport wide digital trunk radio service to its unified digital communications platform: Affini Real-Time Connect (ARTC).

In order to serve the communication requirements of all airport tenants, Affini’s commercial real-time connect platform provides a communications bridge between digital and analogue communications.

This allows inter- and intra-group communications between airport tenants, as well as between ground handlers and airlines.

The company’s real-time connect and the new DMR element also uses Heathrow T2’s common radio infrastructure, which makes the service more cost effective for all users.

The ARTC technology also incorporates the Motorola WAVE IP integration solution. In addition to the features of the new DMR network, the WAVE element allows Affini customers to communicate using a range of devices including PTT radio, Android and IOS smartphones, IP desk phones, or desktop computers.

The service also enables communication with colleagues based www.netcommseurope.com

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At Heathrow T2 outside of the airport perimeter, or globally if required.

As an example, a desk-based employee based at Heathrow airport can use ARTC DMR to speak to their colleagues in the USA, using the device of their choice. A large international airline was the first customer to sign up to the ARTC DMR service.

The airline’s ARTC DMR service includes full dispatch communications to more than one hundred and thirty hand held portable radio users and ten in-vehicle radios, all with airport-wide coverage.

The airline benefits from full LAN/WAN mobile communications integrated with desktop client devices, with full scalability and the peace of mind that it is using proven technology.

Control room

All communications are managed by the airline from its control room, using ARTC touch screen panels. The airline has reported that this has had the added benefit of de-cluttering the working environment, because there is no need to have radios and desktop phones littering the surfaces. Employees communicate with each other using whichever device is to hand.

“The ARTC DMR platform at Heathrow T2 is the first commercial deployment of Motorola Connect Plus on a shared platform. This approach provides better and consistent airportwide coverage and can support numerous customers’ communications services,” said Affini CEO, Jason Colombo.

“As we have made use of the common infrastructure at T2, we can provide all of our customers with seamless communications across digital and analogue wherever required, at a very small monthly cost.”

The integrated ARTC service includes rapid and critical voice services and real-time enterprise data applications, with the potential for future video.

ARTC with DMR added is the first stage in creating a secure IPbased critical comms environment working side by side with other aviation operational systems, such as www.netcommseurope.com

Collaborative Decision Making, aircraft turnaround and tracking.

“As long as the chosen device has an IP connection we can enable a secure communication connection and deliver comms to ensure that critical information, whether voice or data, is delivered to that device wherever it may be,” said Colombo.

“Having real-time updates at their fingertips assists airport operations personnel in the task of turning planes around quickly and safely, by consistently helping them to make informed decisions,” he explained.

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Testing testing

Following comprehensive testing, combined with Affini’s experience in delivering critical comms in aviation environments, the ARTC DMR system worked perfectly when T2 opened for business in early June of this year.

As a result of this early success, Affini has added four new airport customers to its art digital service platform and is conducting trials on behalf of several other organisations.

About Affini Technology

Affini is a systems integrator, specialising in consultancy, design, deployment and in-life management of complex infrastructure technology and communication solutions.

The company brings together fixed, wireless and mobility domains with capabilities that span broad technology arenas to include: wireless technology; data centre & IT technology; mobility & end user computing; unified plus realtime communications; outsourced & managed services.

Affini’s expertise enables organisations to leverage their technology investments to generate incremental value and enhance operational performance.

The company is vendor agnostic, designing and delivering solutions from the technologies that will best address end-user mission, process and business critical communication challenges. www.affini.co.uk

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NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 47

CASE STUDY

xxxxxxx PDU Online’s product range beings benefits to all

Bespoke Solutions Satisfy How PDU Online offers a premium but highly cost-effective service

800 products

bar clip together technology has been

tested and proven run up to 23 per cent PDU Online’s prodcooler under load than conventional hard wired products. uct range offers However, power distribution units have many varied applications outside benefits to both the datacoms environment.

Other applications include shop installers and fitting end for checkouts or product displays and many PDU’s are designed into users. office or laboratory furniture for

“Whilst featuring over 800 products on the Web site the key to our success,” says Stephen Smith of PDUonline, “is in our ability to provide bespoke products to satisfy our customer’s needs.”

As a proud British manufacturer, he adds, the company has been able to concentrate on what we are good at: listening to our customer’s requirements - providing technical drawings for approval if required and having the ability to manufacture and deliver if not next day, the day after.

The rack market was the entry level providing 19-inch horizontal and larger vertical mount units as standard. Initially with UK 13 amp outlets the range now includes European Schuko, French Belgian, North American plus IEC C13 and C19 outlets and combinations of all the above.

Control devices moved from simple switches to MCB’s, RCD’s then RCBO’s as capacities increased from 13 amps to 25 then 32 requiring much more than simply fixing an EN60309 plug on the end of the lead.

Surge protection, EMC filters and sequential start all followed as did the provision of three phase PDU’s – three phase power generation being attractive to data centre and facilities managers.

Heat generation

As is also the matter of heat generation which our unique design of PDU by bus

schools, universities and throughout the healthcare sector.

Such special applications as a recent contract to supply units to be fitted in lockers that permit the recharging of equipment overnight is typical. The applications appear endless.

Standards

PDU’s are manufactured to the relevant British and International standards and some applications have their own particular standard.

BS7676:2008 for instance specifies the requirements for the safe provision or installation of electrical power, data and telecommunication systems in office furniture, office screens and educational furniture.

A way of demonstrating compliance of the duty of care as defined in the Electricity at work Regulation and the Health and Safety at Work act is to use products compliant to the relevant British Standard.

Any electrical system being fed from one 13 Amp UK plug must not consist

of more than six individually fused sockets rated at no greater than 3.15 amps each or four individually fused sockets rated no greater than at 5 amps each.

Equipment rated higher than 5 amps or products encompassing a greater number of socket outlets should not be used.

Additionally, products should be provided with an earthing terminal and the whole construction should be made from durable materials.

Obviously the intention to discourage the use of extension trailing sockets in the workplace is clear and is not lost on the health and safety fraternity or the insurance companies who wish to minimise actions in the claims culture we currently find ourselves in.

PDU Online currently manufacture products to meet this standard. The various designs utilise aluminium profiles to give and strength and rigidity to the main construction with the individual modules being made from polycarbonate; known to be one of the most durable thermoplastics.

To meet the required standard should be a minimum, it is what else we can offer that should be exciting.

With no third parties or call centres we encourage direct dialogue with our customers which enable us to offer the latest technology as it is developed that can include HDMI or USB changer modules, Cat 6 data, phono or microphone outlets.

As the site has expanded so the need to supply peripheral related products has become necessary and it is now possible to one stop shop that can include flexible conduits, under-desk basket and USB wall sockets.

“As we attract more customers so the demands are increasing which is great for us”, says Smith.

“People like to buy British if they can and they like to be able to talk technically to someone if necessary and not have to post questions on message boards and then wait for a reply,” he adds. www.pduonline.co.uk

An eight-way approach to PDU technology...

48 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

www.netcommseurope.com

DIRECTORY

active products Austin Hughes solutions provide data centre managers and administrators instant secure, local and remote access control to mission critical equipment. Our leading edge Cyber ViewTM LCD drawer and KVM (leyboard, Video and Mouse) Solutions provide the widest range, available on the shortest lead-times in the European market today whilst ensuring capital equipment and software management costs are kept to an absolute minimum.

Our InfraSolution® and SmartPDU® products enable data centre operations managers, IT administrators and facilities managers to enhanace rack level security and equipment effeciency by using remote rack IP door access with swipe card control, temperature & humidity monitoring including intergrated monitored and switched rack PDU’s. To lower energy consumption, make more informed capacity planning decisions and improved operational efficiency our InfaPower® locally metered, remotely monitored and switched rack PDU’s are designed for use across the network, either locally via serial or over IP. Austin Hughes Europe Unit 1, Chancery Gate Business Centre Manor House Avenue, Southampton SO15 0AE, UK Tel + 44 2380 529303 Email: sales@austin-hughes.eu Web: ww.austin-hughes.eu

network infrastructure products Cannon Technologies is an international leader in the design and manufacture of IT infrastructure. From fully featured server racks, high density cooling and power management to remote control systems all under BSI - ISO 9001 :2008 Cannon Technologies has serviced some of the world’s leading organisations and is the ideal partner for challenging projects.

Taking our 35+ years of experience in the market Cannon Technologies has launched a completely unique modular data centre solution that will dramatically alter the way everyone views modular build techniques. The design is based on existing, market proven solutions and can be deployed in a fraction of the time required for traditional modular builds. Offering a wide range of in built features such as: Power protection; Power management; Cooling; Fire detection & suppression; Environmental & security monitoring; Low PUE. Cannon Technologies Ltd Queensway, New Milton Hampshire, BH25 5NU, UK Tel: +44 1425 632600 Email: sales@cannontech.co.uk Web: www.cannontech.co.uk

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cable management

network infrastructure products

Cablenet Trackmaster Ltd is an importer and distributor od networking, cabling and power products. As well as a wide range of imported copper and fibre optic cabling products and computer cables Cablenet also distributes for a number of best breed vendors.

Cablenet has one of the UK’s widest ranges of copper patch cables in stock, with cables available in 11 different colours and lenfths from 0.3mtr up 30mtr, and also has in house a manufacturing facilitty to produce cables to your own specifications Call our sales team on the contact details below for more information on this. Our sales staff are very knowledgeable about the products we sell,w ith particular expertise in Cabinets, KVM and UPS. Our 18,000ft2 southern logistics centre is within an hours drive of central London and 30 minutes drive from Heathrow airport marking Cablenet an ideal partner for intergrators and installers who serve the UK, international financial markets and overseas customers.

Brand-Rex is a leading BrandRex global supplier of structured cabling systems for data networks, and is a niche supplier of high performance cables for extreme environment applications.

The Brand-Rex data communication solutions include high performance copper and fibre optic cabling systems, a unique air-blown fibre system, high density data centre cabinet systems and an intelligent Infrastructure Management solution. Through sophisticated modelling techniques, extensive research and advanced test laboratories, Brand-Rex designs, develops and manufacture some of the most advanced cable and connectivity solutions available on the market today.

Brand-Rex has been manufacturing in the UK for almost 40 years and is one and is one of Europe’s leading structured cabling providers. With a worldwide office network, Brand-Rex delivers international sales and technical support to an extensive global customer base.

Cablenet Trackmasters Ltd Cablenet House 2A Albany Park, Frimley Road Camberley, Surrey GU16 7PL UK Tel: +44 1276 405 300 Fax: +44 1275 405 309 Email: sales@cablenet.co.uk

Brand-Rex Head Office Viewlield Industrial Estate Glenrothes File KY6 2RS UK Tel: +44 1592 772124 Email: morketing@brand-rex.com Web: www.brand-rex.com

network infrastructure products Creating perfect connections is Metz Connect’s core competence. The personal commitment of the founding family characterizes the international success of the independent, medium-sized enterprise group, which together with its subsidiaries pursuers the company’s goals with a high degree of responsibility.

Highly innovative, efficient processes and partnerships have characterized the Metz Connect Group for decades. The company’s brands RIA Connect, BTR Netcom and MCQ Tech offer a diverse, innovative product portfolio with highly specialized connector components that satisfy with highest quality.

Metz Connect Ottilienweg 9 78176 Blumberg Deutschland Phone +49 7702 5330 Fax +49 7702 533 433 Email: sales@metz-connect.com Web: www.metz-connect.com

network infrastructure products

Established for 30 years, Comtec provides the trade with one of the most comprehensive product portfolios for building and maintaining communication networks.

We stock everything from structured cabling and tooling to specialist fibre optic and copper test equipment and aim to deliver quality products at the lowest possible price, next day.

• • • • • • •

ADC KRONE premier distributor Nexans cabling solutions Cooper B-Line cabinets Over 5 ,000 product lines stocked Volume discounts FREE technical support Easy ordering by credit card or Trade Account

Orderphone: +44 1480 415400 Orderfax: +44 1480 454724 Email: sales@comtec-comms.com Web: www.comtecdirect.co.uk

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 49

DIRECTORY

network infrastructure products

Cray Valley is a leading distributor of Networking, Cabling Infrastructure and IP Physical security products and prides itself on the innovative range in its portfolio.

With a market leading Wireless LAN product from Extricom that has a unique single Wireless blanket giving it a number of technical advantages unavailable to traditional cell based wireless systems.

The innovative and comprehensive range of IP door access/IP cameras/IP Environmental monitoring from Axxess ID coupled with excellent technical back up support offered across the range from leading manufacturers, Cray Valley offers a partnership of choice to its customers. This is complemented with a full range of High speed RF and FSO links, with all products having free training courses available from the manufacturer. Our Cabling infrastructure Systems from Siemon, Nexans and Matrix are well respected Global manufacturers with a full range of Cat5e/ Cat6/Cat6a and Cat7 and Fibre.

Cray Valley Communications Limited Unit 11, Concorde Business Centre Airport Industrial Estate Westerham, Kent TN 16 3YN, UK Tel: +44 1959 573444 Fax: +44 1959 572172 Web: www.crayvalleycomms.co.uk

network infrastructure products Mills is a leading distributor of structured cabling, cable management and specialist tooling for the communications industry.

With a stocked product range of over 4000 lines, Mills is the one stop shop for your cabling infrastructure requirements.

network infrastructure products Excel is a worldclass premium performance endto-end infrastructure solution – designed, manufactured, supported and delivered – without compromise.

Excel is driven by a team of industry experts, ensuring the latest innovation and manufacturing capabilities are implemented to surpass industry standards for quality and performance, technical compliance and ease of installation and use.

Since the brand was conceived in 1997, Excel has enjoyed formidable growth and is now reported in the latest BSRIA UK market report as the 2nd largest structured cabling brand with 17% share of the UK market in 2013. The system is also a growing force in markets across EMEA and is sold and supported in over 70 countries.

Excel European Headquarters Excel House Junction Six Industrial Park Electric Avenue Birmingham B6 7JJ UK Tel: +44 (0)121 326 7557 Email: sales@excel-networking.com Web: www.excel-networking.com

network infrastructure products Minitran is a leading distributor specialising in structured cabling systems, networking, audio visual, home automation products and security systems and has been established since 1989.

Brands include Panduit, Nexans, Hubbell, Rittal, Dataracks, TE Connectivity, Belden, Schneider, Abitana, Domintell, Aten, Austin Hughes, Planex, Draka, Acome, GeoDesy, Noyes, Sharpmark, Psiber Data, Greenlee and our own Mini5/6 range.

• Cabinets & Enclosures

• Cable Preparation &

• Structured Cabling

Termination Tools

• Fibre Optics & Tooling

• Power Tools

• Voice Products

• Contractors Tools & General

• Structured cabling • Home automation • Audio visual •

• Active Products

Hand Tools

Fibre optic • Voice products • Cable protection • Ethernet

• Coaxial and Audio Visual

• Overhead & Underground

switches • Wireless LAN • Enclosures • Power products • Test

• Power Distribution

Cabling Equipment

equipment • Security

• Trunking & Cable

• Safety Equipment

Management/Fixing

• Test Equipment

• Tool Kits & Tool Cases

Mills is the premier distributor of the full Fusion structured cabling system range. Established over 90 years, Mills is an IS09001 and Investors In People certified company. Free catalogue on request.

Mills Ltd, 13 Fairway Drive, Fairway Industrial Estate, Greenford, Middlesex. UB6 8PW, UK Tel: 020 8833 2626 Email: sales@millsltd.com Web: www.millsltd.com

50 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

Comprehensive stock is held in our warehouse for next day delivery or collection. Orders placed up to 5.30pm are despatched the same day. Our experienced sales and technical support team provide free advice and assistance with design.

Minitran Ltd Unit 5 Myson Way, Raynham Road Industrial Estate Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire CM23 5JZ Tel: 01279 757775 Fax: 01279 653535 Email: sales@minitran.co.uk Web: www.minitran.co.uk

network infrastructure products The Fusion Product range represents the outcome of two years of market research and focus groups to establish installers and users expectations for an end-to-end network cabling system.

Altogether better because ..

Completely integrated - so everything fits together Cost effective - ensuring maximum return on investment Fast to install - every aspect of design optimised to save time Comprehensive range - providing a complete solution No excess packaging - save time opening packs and minimise impact on the environment 25 year warranty - providing peace of mind • • • • • • • •

Cat5e Cat6 Fibre Voice Coaxial Audio Visual Cabinets & Enclosures Cable Management

Fusion, PO Box 556, Greenford, UBS 9JS, UK Tel: 0845 370 4709 Email: sales@fusiondatacom.com Web: www.fusiondatacom.com

network infrastructure products Consistently high levels of service, knowledge of our products and attention to detail is what has kept our loyal (and expanding) customer base coming back to us since 2002.

Data Comms Direct are stockists of network infrastructure equipment and specialists in associated power products. Our customers range from one-man IT departments to some of the UKs largest data centres.

• Racks – Flat Packed Wall Cabs & Prism Server Cabs • Power Cables – Over 3000 lines in this category • PDUs – Geist Stockists. Bespoke also available with fast turnaround.

• Large stocks of Cat5e, Cat6 & Fibre Patch Leads • Trunking – Marco Dado, Mini & Power Poles • Desk cable management • Floor boxes & cable covers • Bespoke - If we don’t stock it we can get it made Call us now on 01823 653100 or visit www.dcdi.co.uk for great service, good prices & next day delivery Data Comms Direct Ltd, Unit 3A, Westpark, Wellington, TA21 9AD Tel: 01823 653100 Fax: 01823 661335 Web: www.dcdi.co.uk Email: sales@dcdi.co.uk

www.netcommseurope.com

Visit our website today

www.comtecdirect.co.uk

We supply a comprehensive range of products, from cabinets and structured cabling to specialist test and measurement equipment.

• • • • • •

New products and promotions Easy ordering - credit card or trade account Exclusive prices and terms for trade accounts - apply today Enhanced technical specifications of products Free technical support Next day delivery

Need help with ordering or advice call 01480 415000

Ultima www.netcommseurope.com

NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014 51

Angled Keystone Patch lead management is important, but so is the use of rack space, thanks to the innovative Excel angled keystone jack range, you can have both. Available in Category 6 and 6A, our design allows for up to 48% increase in the port density compared to traditional panels.

Want to save space, time and money?

52 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 6 2014

Contact us +44 (0) 121 326 7557 sales@excel-networking.com www.excel-networking.com www.netcommseurope.com