Firm structures LAN cabling system - Product Information

Communications News, April, 2001

Network administrator cites superior performance, competitive price, system documentation and manageability--and a zero bit error rate warranty.

When ViaSat Inc., a high-tech firm in Carlsbad, CA, set out to build a corporate campus, it decided to also upgrade its data communications system. The previous headquarters had four buildings on a campus split in two by Carlsbad's commuter airport. To handle voice and data communications, it had a T-1 line with a wireless bridge across the airport.

According to Brent Barker, ViaSat network administrator, "Our internal network had grown in spurts over the course of 13 or 14 years, and included a mix of coaxial and twisted-pair cabling. The LAN infrastructure was not designed to a master plan and changes were not well-documented, making maintenance and troubleshooting both time-consuming and difficult. In the new facility, we wanted a state-of-the-art, high-performance, low-maintenance system that would handle current needs and future growth."

DEPLOYING A NEW SYSTEM

ViaSat's new corporate campus is comprised of three two-story buildings housing corporate and administrative offices, manufacturing and assembly facilities, several research and testing laboratories, and the company's mission-critical network operations center (NOC). The LAN infrastructure includes a fiber-optic backbone that connects the floors of each building and links the three buildings together.

For its horizontal cabling infrastructure, ViaSat selected the KRONE TrueNet C5eT System, a structured cabling system designed to support 100Base-T standards to the desktop and optimized for Gigabit Ethernet. A separate TrueNet C5eT intralab network was installed to link laboratories within each of the buildings.

Assisting ViaSat in the design, specification and installation of the system was Teldata Enterprise Networks, a designer/installer of communications systems throughout Southern and Northern California and nationwide.

From customer reference site visits, Barker recalls two structured cabling systems that utilized KRONE Ultim8 blocks. "One was a new facility, the other was three years old," he says. "Yet, both looked exactly the same. You could not tell which one was older. That was the kind of well-documented, easy-to-manage system we wanted."

The selected structured cabling system consists of an integrated system of impedance-matched horizontal cable, patch cords, terminal blocks, jacks and patch panels--all precisely tuned to protect network efficiency and performance.

Product quality and performance, blocks that are easy to install and manage, competitive pricing and a five-year certification of zero bit error rate performance also helped "seal the deal," Barker says.

500,000 FEET OF CABLING

According to Mike De Jesus, Teldata's sales engineer for the ViaSat network installation, the chief installation challenge was space. "Even though this was a new construction, there was not a lot of room for the cabling infrastructure," he notes. "Because of duct work and other obstacles, we had to apply some creative routing to overcome space constraints."

DeJesus estimates the installation of the corporate and intra-lab networks took more than 500,000 feet of cabling and more than 90 96-pair (24-port) KRONE Ultim8 HighBand field assembly kits, each containing 12 Ultim8 Blocks, plus wire managers, label holder and mounting bracket. Network hardware includes 3Com Corebuilder 9000 and other components.

ViaSat's network installation involved more than 2,600 drops. In each of the buildings, the telecom closets are stacked, with the main distribution frame (MDF) on the first floor and the intermediate distribution frame (IDF) on the second. The intralab network has its own feeds from the MDF and IDF, terminating in each lab in a rack enclosure with TrueNet C5eT patch panels. This separate network employs the vendor's 48-port C5eT enhanced patch panels and K600 jacks.

After the ViaSat installation, active on-site testing of the network performance was conducted to check the network's data transmission efficiency, as well as the performance of all the cabling, cable system components and network electronics.

While the ViaSat local area networks are currently transmitting voice and data communications, Barker says the company plans to add video capabilities in the near future. "It's good to know this system will support our plans by providing a complete end-to-end channel, with extra bandwidth and better attenuation," he concludes.

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