Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1192126
January/February/March 2020 I 53 Main Regional Hospital Video Voice Data Cloud Affiliated physician offices within 18 miles Affiliated healthcare clinics within 18 miles 18 miles, unmanaged, unpowered, passive, private optical LAN FIGURE 9: With passive optical LANs, there is a 12-18 mile reach over the passive network. Private LANs serving regional healthcare facilities can have lower latency, stronger security and improved performance. of telecommunications enclosures (TEs) can be reduced. With the elimination of TRs, healthcare facilities benefit from lower network operational costs (e.g., fewer touch points for the IT staff), fewer power plants, less power backup, less air conditioning load and less required floor space. Network Convergence Historically, LANs were built with separate physical equip- ment and cable infrastructure for voice, video and data. For healthcare facilities, separate needs for wireless, nurse call systems, building automation, patient entertainment, video surveillance, security and fire networks ran on different cabling infrastructures. With POL, all networks can be converged. Furthermore, analog voice (i.e., plain old telephone service [POTS]) can be delivered on the same network as voice over internet protocol (VoIP) unified communications. Radio frequency (RF) video and IP video for patient entertainment, security or medical care can all traverse the same fiber cabling and POL infrastructure. These services and network conver- gence typically save health care facilities operational expenses (OpEx) and capital expenses (CapEx). Extended Reach Between Buildings or Campuses Since POL has the inherent benefit of being able to trans- port healthcare services across a span 300 times longer than copper-based LANs with no power, air conditioning, ventilation, floor space or management needs, that means healthcare facilities have fewer devices and LAN moving parts to manage. It also means fewer items to purchase. The all-fiber infrastructure can also be extended across large regional hospital campuses to support the needs of neighboring clinics and network physicians (Figure 9). POL architecture includes single centralized active equipment, referred to as the optical line terminal (OLT), and simple, passive fiber network thin-client edge devices known as optical network terminals (ONTs).