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Relying on Structured Cabling Solutions

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

Putting up and maintaining

a reliable, cost-effective network infrastructure have widely been regarded as an

essential investment for business competitiveness. A well-designed cabling system with an

efficient installation using a high-quality components is essential for optimum network

efficiency and reliability. Needless to say, structured cabling is the lifeline of an

information network.

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Users in the key vertical segments like banking and finance,

manufacturing, telcos, and software development centres have been deploying

mission-critical applications on their networks. Which, in turn, require greater bandwidth

capacity. And, it has necessitated the physical infrastructure to be capable of

withstanding the ensuing load on the backbone. Therefore, there have been rapid

advancements in the transmission speeds on the network over the last five years.

High-speed data transmission technologies like ATM and Gigabit Ethernet are becoming

available at affordable prices.

Structured cabling has always led and will continue to lead the

advancements in networking. Unlike active networking components, structured cables are

part of the infrastructure. It is difficult to change the pipes once it is installed. In

this background, structured cabling has to be able to support data transmission speeds

that may emerge over a period of 10-15 years. So, choosing the right kind structured

cabling which fulfils the requirements of the user’s network is very critical.

In order to provide to our readers a perspective about the necessity of

having structured cabling and the nuances of selecting the right kind of cables,

implementing and customizing it, we have made an attempt to address these issues in the

form of two case studies. These case studies detail the procedures involved in selecting

the right kind of technology and vendor, stages in designing the physical network,

implementing the cables, running the applications on the physical network infrastructure,

and above all how it helps the user in achieving its business goal.

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Also, is a special report on the first blown-fibre network installation

at CMC Mumbai.


CASE STUDY1 COLOR="#000000" size="1">

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Wheel & Axle size="5">Plant

AMP’s structured cabling solutions help

Wheel & Axle Plant (in Bangalore) to have the required bandwidth for running

state-of-the-art applications.

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Background

size="1" color="#000000">Name: Wheel & Axle Plant (Indian Railways)



Area of Operation: Manufacturing of wheels, axles, and wheelsets for Indian
Railways



Covered Area of the Plant: 60,000 sq. m.


Employees: 2,000


Capacity of Plant: 1 lakh wheels & 50,000 axles


Type of Products: (i) wheels: 4 types



face="Arial">; (ii) Axles: 15

types



Turnover: Rs 230 crore per annum


Size of the Network: 150 nodes


Integrator: CMS Computers Ltd


Cabling Vendor: AMP India


Cable Used: Fibre, UTP, and thin cables


Duration of the Project: 3 months




color="#FFFFFF">User Profile

Wheel & Axle Plant (WAP) is a manufacturing plant of

Indian Railways located in Bangalore. The plant was commissioned in September 1984 for the

manufacturing of cast steel wheels, forged axles, and assembly of wheelsets to meet the

Indian Railway’s requirements and its accepted specifications.

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The plant has been certified for its quality management

system to BS EN ISO 9002: 1994 for the manufacture and supply of wheels, axles, and

wheelsets. This plant has also been approved by Association of American Rail Roads (AAR)

for the supply of wheels and axles to US Rail Roads and others.

Purpose of Going for Structured Cabling SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000">

The goal was to have a fast and the state of the art data communication

network so that users at distant locations can also access the data instantaneously.

"Need for having a computerized integrated production management system necessitated

building up a physical network. The decision to switch to structured cabling was taken in

early 1998. The previous network was riddled with bandwidth bottlenecks," says, V

Babtiwale, senior EDP manager, Wheel & Axle Plant, Indian Railways. SIZE="4" COLOR="#016077">

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Evolution of the Network

Since its start-up in 1984, Wheel & Axle

Plant had an old mini-computer type of system which was affected by maintenance-related

problem. Way back in June 1993 when LAN was not very popular among Indian users, Wheel

& Axle Plant embraced LAN and it had 40 computers connected to the network with two

servers. The network was on ArcNet technology. Over the years, it kept on adding more and

more nodes to the network until it reached 150 nodes. It had all possible operating

systems like Novell Netware and Windows NT.

alt="V Babtiwale, senior EDP manager." align="left" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4">After

having all the required hardware and software in place, there was a necessity to have all

the manufacturing activities on-line. It was critical that the network should have

sufficient bandwidth so that the user could run its applications. The network should

function smoothly without any bottlenecks. Realizing this, the network of the

administrative building was changed from Arcnet to Shared Ethernet last year. In the

beginning of 1998, it decided to change the network of factory area to Switched Ethernet.

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Two factors were responsible for this move. First and

foremost was that the users wanted more bandwidth which Arcnet was not able to provide.

Second was that the components of Arcnet technology were not available in the market.

Before deciding in favour of Switched Ethernet, it made a through study on all the

technologies available. And, it decided to go for Switched Ethernet rather than Shared

Ethernet because it did not want any change to the network for another 5-10 years.

Then, it designed its network and floated tenders. Wheel

and Axle Plant network is a unique one because its servers are installed in the

administrative building and a major chunk of the nodes are located in the factory area.

What is interesting is that the factory area is one and half kilometre away from the

administrative building. The cabling technology which was available to support this

distance was inadequate. The selection of the cabling vendor was based on the following

parameters:

(a) proven and undisputed technological products,

(b) technical knowledge and support,

(c) willingness to co-ordinate and technical

transparency, and

(d) market opinion and impression about the vendor. And,

the user opted for AMP India.

alt="https://img-cdn.thepublive.com/filters:format(webp)/vnd/media/post_attachments/c049e751f897c375089b0ef073e6570efdc37aa28d156c8f052db9b0154e43ac.gif (43215 bytes)" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="4">WAP installed fibre for

campus backbone and in every 500 m, depending on the manufacturing site and network

requirement, it deployed LAN components. Wherever there was no distance limitations, it

installed UTP cables. The entire network has 2 km fibre and 4 km of UTP cable and it also

has 13 switches which connect seven plants. Each desktop enjoys 10 Mbps dedicated switched

bandwidth. It has changed its servers from 486-based ones to 82 300 Mhz which have a

capacity of 12 Gb hard disk. With the availability of increased bandwidth, it has

discarded DOS-based applications and embraced Windows-based applications.

CMS Computers Ltd, the systems integrator, has been

doing the maintenance of the network.

Present Network

The plant is equipped with an on-line data

capturing system based on the LAN technology. It uses a software developed specifically

for the plant called Integrated Production Management System (IPMS). This software

encompasses complete gamut of activities which include production planning and control,

manufacturing, purchase, inventory control, finance, personnel, and other support

activities of the plant. The network has six file servers and 170 nodes located at all

important activity centres in the plant and administrative building.

The system provides all information about production

inspection, quality control, inventory balances, expenditures, etc. A universal

user-friendly query system called QUEST gives general information to all the employees on

items like PF balances, leave records at any of the nodes at the network.

As the computer network is all pervasive at Wheels and

Axles Plant and almost all facets of WAP’s functions are totally dependent upon its

hence no weak links or breakdown of network can be averted. V Babtiwale concedes,

"Criticality of the physical network infrastructure and it, healthy and proper

functioning is appreciated and understood by WAP management."

alt="Wheels & axles." align="left" border="0" hspace="4" vspace="4">The network

infrastructure includes fibre and shielded-twisted pair of cabling. The network

certification and performance was considered as a key issue in taking decision about the

vendor of passive components. The active components were decided based on the employed

technology in the LAN electronics components and the technology upgradation features

available in various vendors.

The present network application considered for

deployment is 10 Mbps Switched Ethernet on the desktop with 100 Mbps backbone capacity.

The cabling distance limitations have been so observed that migration to Fast Ethernet up

to desktop will involve only minor upgradation of LAN electronics and no changes in

cabling infrastructure is required.

A Switched Ethernet LAN would provide much higher

bandwidth with increased data transfer rate. It leads to better management information

system, higher productions, better productivity, and employee satisfaction.

Babtiwale is pleased with the outcome of the project

which takes care of the present as well as future requirements. Says he, "As

opportunities increase to use multimedia and Internet access, thus adding value to the

management, the cabling system can support all these applications. This high-quality

cabling infrastructure can support new applications and technologies as they are developed

and introduced."

Satya Prakash Singh

CASE STUDY 2 COLOR="#000000" size="1">

Infosys Technologies SIZE="1">

Nordx/CDT’s IBDN

structured cabling solutions help Infosys Technologies to build up a state-of-the-art

infrastructure.

color="#FFFFFF" size="4">User Profile



face="Arial" SIZE="1">Name: Infosys Technologies



Site: Electronics City, Bangalore


Area of Operation: Software development, consultancy


Employees: 900


Network Size: 1,300 nodes


Systems Integrator: In-house technical resources team


Cabling Vendor: Nordx/CDT


Type of Cabling: Nordx/CDT’s IBDN cabling solutions









Background

Started in 1981, Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies is a fast growing

company whose core competency is in software development, consultancy, and application

software.

In 1997-98, the sales revenue of Infosys

was Rs 260.4 crore, up from Rs 143.8 crore in 1996-97, thereby posting a growth of 81

percent. In terms of manpower, the company has grown from 1,705 employees in 1996-97 to

2,605 in 1997-98.

Infosys currently focuses on its global

market through its eight business units. The business units of the company deliver

services limited to offshore turnkey projects, offshore software maintenance, offshore

development centres, and on-site consultancy.

Evolution of the Network color="#000000" size="3">

Providing quality software

solutions to customers around the globe is the main focus of the company. And, developing

it requires a flexible, high calibre structured cabling system as a basis for support.

Realizing the need to have an effective

communication as its valuable weapon in business, Infosys Technologies gave it a top

priority. During the planning stage of the Electronics City building in 1994, it started

evaluating various networking vendors. For this, deadlines were very rigid and the mandate

was very clear. By that time, it was already decided that Infosys’s in-house

technical resources team would do the integration work. The company had the mandate to go

for an infrastructure which would support Fast Ethernet technology and leave enough

headroom for future applications. Its key requirement was to install a cabling system that

would provide an assurance to support not only the applications of today, but also the

future high-speed applications that it plans to implement.

The adoption of any future advanced

technologies will emphasize pressing need for the underlying infrastructure that will

support them, the voice and data networks.

height="189" alt="Infosys Technologies' Electronics city site, Bangalore." align="right"

hspace="4" vspace="4">"We decided to go for structured cabling because to have an

efficient physical infrastructure is very critical as it forms the backbone of our

business," says Koushik RN, assistant manager, technical resources, Infosys

Technologies.

Having decided for structured cabling,

Infosys Technologies evaluated all the cabling vendors available. The technical group gave

recommendations on the selection of vendor considering some of the key attributes that the

vendor should have like quality of product, price, delivery, and after-sales support. And,

it chose Nordex/CDT IBDN cabling for the passive network components. Nordex/CDT serves the

needs of corporate voice, data, and multimedia communications with complete structured

wiring solutions, including wiring, wiring closet equipment, installation and testing

tools, fibre-optic equipment, outside plant copper cable, and all other components

required to build a robust, cost-effective network infrastructure.

As far as the active network components

were concerned, it selected Cisco for switches and routers, Micom for multiplexers, and

PictureTel for videoconferencing equipment. A project consisting of Infosys Technologies

technical resources team and Apcom Computers which distributes Nordx/CDT in India was

formed and a plan of action was put in place.

As per the mandate, the project

was completed on time. The outcome of which is that the network has a bandwidth capacity

of 100 Mbps for the backbone and switched 10 Mbps capacity for the desktop. The completion

of the project gave a uniformity of cabling systems and brought about substantial savings

in maintenance cost and labour requirements as well as reduced the network down time. With

the installation of Nordx/CDT IBDN system, the user has been able to find out where every

piece of cable begins and ends and where it is routed in between. That is a tremendous

benefit considering the amount of adds, moves, and changes that most organizations undergo

in a given year. The Infosys Electronics city facility is completely certified by

Nordx/CDT which means that it complies with EIA/TIA-568A guidelines for "Category

5" data cable installations.

Present Network

Infosys’s state-of-the-art

development facility at Electronics City, Bangalore, is one of the largest of its kind in

India. Realizing the criticality of having a technological infrastructure, Infosys

Technologies has made substantial investments in this. Here, the hardware comprises S/390

IBM Mainframe, several AS/400s, over 100 UNIX and PC servers, and numerous IBM mainframe

workbenches. This hardware is completed by the latest software including development

tools, utilities, and RDBMS platforms.

All the employees of Infosys

Technologies including those at the Electronics City facility are provided with

state-of-the-art machines and stay connected through a 4,000-node network. Individual

E-mail connectivity and intranet allow employees spread across the globe to access

information seamlessly.

The Infosys Technologies’

communication network consists of several high-speed data links, with diverse routing to

increase reliability. By providing global connectivity, this network has made the offshore

project management concept a reality.

Infosys Technologies has put in place

very strict security and non-disclosure procedures. Firewalls ensure that Infosys networks

do not provide a path for customers to access each other’s networks. Effective

back-up and disaster recovery procedures are also in place. This ensures the protection of

its customers’ intellectual property, which is of prime importance.

Satya Prakash Singh SIZE="1">

SPECIAL REPORT COLOR="#016077" size="1">

CMC COLOR="#000000"> Mumbai

The first blown fibre site in India gets

installed at CMC Mumbai. How does this new concept give cost and upgradation benefits? A

report.

height="271" alt="https://img-cdn.thepublive.com/filters:format(webp)/vnd/media/post_attachments/4e5aba56c4d5956afe0afbb2c8e77647d6bab853c47ed676b92f59d78c9498a4.gif (21456 bytes)" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="4"> color="#000000">Needless to say that the rapid pace of systems development has created an

overwhelming demand in the networking market. But now the challenge is a future-proof

network on account of flexibility and capacity. Here the million dollar question pertains

to the suitability of installed structured cabling systems to support to latest high-speed

LAN protocols. With new Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and ATM speed protocols coming to

the stream, the options available are to have either a product, which meets the Category 5

standards or a product having the headroom to go beyond the standards. Blolite has been

developed to cater to this demand. This is jointly developed by BT and BICC and has been

installed in numerous facilities around the UK and Asia.

The blown fibre principle revolves

around the creation of a network infrastructure at low cost by installing empty plastic

tubes. Specially designed optical fibres can be blown into the tubes to create data links

using compressed air and the compact, sophisticated Blolite installation equipment. Given

the high-quality and highly efficient network required and the unknown future-network

changes, Blolite blown fibre assumes more significance.

Recently, Blolite blown fibre got

installed in the network of CMC, Mumbai. With this, the CMC network in Mumbai got the

credit of having the country’s first blown fibre backbone.

height="135" alt="Blolite system." align="right" hspace="4" vspace="4">The modus

operandi
is simple. The fibres are blown but not pulled into the tubes thus by

eliminating tensile stress on the fibre up to 1,000 m runs horizontally and 300 m

vertically. The installation is at a speed up to 40 m per minute. The labour strength

required is one trained installer and one assistant. The cost-effectiveness makes the

blown fibre an ideal solution for structured cabling requirements. Explains Gul Gidvani,

regional sales manager of BICC Brand Rex, "Blown fibre costs about the same as

conventional optical cable, but the real advantage comes from deferred cost. For example,

most people today put in six-core or eight-core fibre multimode backbone cables, but

independent research has shown that 75 percent of that fibre is redundant or spare

capacity. The end user invests in fibre on an as ‘needed’ basis." For

cost-effective upgrades and repairs, the technique can be used since fibre circuits can be

blown out or replaced. Once installed, the Blolite network can be switched to the latest

fibre technology with the minimum fuss and disruption. Currently up to eight fibres can be

installed in the same tube.

On account of future expansion,

blown fibre backbone appears as a solution. With the expansion in bandwidth requirements

of emerging systems, many multimode backbones are becoming saturated. This results in the

installation of further multimode fibres or the shift to single mode fibre. Here the blown

fibre backbone occupies the centrestage. Says Milind Takur, zonal manager (networking) CMC

Mumbai, "The installation of a blown-fibre backbone would provide a more

cost-effective solution and would allow for the simple transition from multimode to

singlemode fibre." The introduction of BloTwist, which combines Category 5 twisted

pair and blown fibre technology, added new dimensions to the Blolite product portfolio. By

breaking the network down into three discrete elements—Category 5 UTP, STP or FTP

copper cables, Bloduct passive infrastructure, and high-performance optical-cable

fibres—BloTwist achieves its cost-effectiveness and flexibility. Explains Chintak

Dalal, technical manager of BICC Brand-Rex, "In this process, the Category 5 cabling

and the Bloduct are installed simultaneously while the fibre is added only when required.

Thus for a medium to large scale project, whole life costs could be reduced by to

two-thirds by using blown fibre."

The Differences

Conventional Fibre Optic Cabling System

Normally most of the end users are going for

six-core indoor/outdoor fibre-optic cable, which alone contributes to about 90 percent of

the installations. Various factors are contributing to this. Customers need two-core for

network to run again in most of the cases. This comes to 95 percent installations. The

future upgradation and expansion of bandwidth needs will call for more fibre cables. For

unexpected and emergency failures of some cores, customers need to build in redundancy

cores. In order to compare the benefits of conventional and blown fibre cables, a typical

example of a site, wherein 1 km of indoor fibre-optic cable is required, is taken into

account. Price to the customer for six-core indoor fibre-optic cable is Rs 171 per metre.

To add to it is the cable laying charges of Rs 15 per metre. Hence, the total cost on day

one for catering to today’s need, future provision, and redundancy stands at Rs 186

per metre.

Blown Fibre Optic Cabling System

As per this technology by BICC

Brand-Rex, two products need to be laid. One is the single indoor microduct of 8 mm size.

The price to the end customer for the bloduct is Rs 25 per metre. With the addition of

labour charges, the figure reaches Rs 29. The second product in the system is the two-core

fibre, which costs Rs 33 per metre per core-fibre to the end customer. Hence the cost in

this case (two-core fibre) is Rs 66. The current blown fibre charge works out to Rs 10 per

metre. So, the use of this technology makes an expense of Rs 105 per metre only. Here the

comparative study reaches the conclusion that the initial savings on day one if going for

the blown fibre in case of 1 km of cables is Rs 81,000 (Rs 81x1,000).

Assume the situation five years later

when network expansion calls for more fibres. Upgradation cost in conventional system on a

rough estimate is considered nil but the interest lost for five years due to more

investment incurred on day one is Rs 81,000. While in the case of blown fibre system, the

price to blow in two-core fibres is Rs 17 per metre per core on the assumption that in

fibre technology prices are reducing and halved every five years.

Going by this estimate, the cable cost

is Rs 34 per metre and an additional cost of Rs 10 per metre that makes the additional

cost after five years at Rs 44 per metre. Gul Gidvani is giving an investment perspective

to the comparative study. "Rs 81,000 saving interested Rs 81,000. So total capital in

hand at the end of the 5th year when gone for blown fibre is Rs 162,000, of which the

spending is only Rs 44,000."

Once again, a comparison requires at the

end of the seventh year wherein a situation arises which makes it necessary to go for more

upgradation of technology and the multimode fibre cannot be used for high bandwidth

application. In short, the customer has to have a single mode. In the case of conventional

system, the situation leads to the change of the entire cable which, in turn, results in

the one and the only option of six-core single mode. In token of this, cable and

installation cost comes to Rs 55 per metre (Rs 35 + Rs 15). This estimate is made on the

assumption that six-core single mode cable is today available at around Rs 80 per metre

and it will be available at less than half the price at that time. Going by the same

assumption, the cost for blown fibre system at that point of time is considered Rs 26 per

metre inclusive of the fibre blowing charges. BICC sources, the advocates of this

technology, strongly believe that this cycle continues for ever.

Anil Joseph

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