Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1192126
56 I ICT TODAY phones, laptop computers, printers, cameras and access controls. By using ceiling boxes to bring fiber as close to the end users as possible, the project minimized the amount of copper required. Installers put in slightly more than 10 miles (approximately 6 kilometers) of Cat 6A cable in the hospital. A traditional active Ethernet LAN would have required more than 60 miles (approximately 97 kilometers) of Cat 6A cable. Deploying POL using zone ceiling boxes also addressed two major hospital issues: sanitation and patient privacy. Concealing the ONTs in the ceiling zone boxes eliminated the need for sanitizing the ONTs deployed in patient areas. Hospital managers did not want ONTs in patient room and examination room walls in case technicians had to troubleshoot any network problems. By installing some of the ONTs in ceiling boxes, the team was able to troubleshoot the network from a hallway rather than intruding into those patient-centered areas. Flexibility for Future Expansion: Depending on the port count needs for the area served, the team installed five or six ONTs in each ceiling box, ran 12 strands of fiber to them and from about 40 of the ceiling boxes fed one of those 12 fibers to the hospital's wireless distributed antenna system (DAS). The installation also coiled the remaining fibers into a service loop to accommodate future expansion. Thus, POL gave the hospital a good deal of room to expand services easily and cost effectively. Currently, the hospital is using 33 of 56 potential PON ports on the chassis. Although those 33 PON ports can support up to 1,100 ONTs, the hospital thus far is using only 830. The ONTs offer the hospital even more flexibility to grow. With 10 to 15 percent port capacity still unused, Guthrie Corning Hospital can still add many more Ether- net connections without adding a single widget. If hospital managers want to add another ONT to some of the ceiling boxes, they would not have to do anything to the switch. If they want to use that optical fiber, they can put in another ceiling box to hold another five or six ONTs and then add some PON cards. The passive optical LAN can give the hospital a very phased and flexible growth strategy. This growth strategy also BICSI Career Center Your ICT Industry Recruitment Solution NEW! ictcareers.bicsi.org