Article by: Ronna Davis, Global Enterprise Ecosystem Leader for CommScope
The BICSI Fall 2017 schedule is packed with great fibre topics that will get you up to light speed on the latest emerging fibre technologies and best practices for installation and testing. Fibre may be all the rage at this show, but there are also many important topics where copper is highlighted: discussions around Power over Ethernet (PoE), grounding and bonding, and the digital transformation and buildings.
Think about it this way: the insatiable demand for fibre is based on all the wired things in your building or campus that have historically utilised copper media. These connected things inside your building are growing at an exponential rate. Whether the thing is directly connected to your wired network or it connects to a wireless access point that is connected to your wired network, you must consider the bandwidth and power implications of all these new things on your network.
Wireless is a great example: wireless demand is a major area of concern for IT managers. Not only do we have an unprecedented number of devices that need access to wireless networks, but mobile users have an expectation that the reliability, speed and bandwidth of the wireless network is that of a wired connection. Copper is king with its amazing bandwidth and power capabilities. It can support high power, high bandwidth wireless access points, as well as the billions of other things that are connecting to building networks around the world. A well-planned and executed high performance copper infrastructure like CommScope’s GigaSPEED X10D, for example, offers technology investment protection, ease of use and a globally recognised device interface in the RJ-45.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m in awe of the engineering genius in our LazrSPEED OM5 multi-mode fibre solution, pushing multi-mode to 100G with only two strands of fibre utilising SWDM. CommScope’s High Speed Migration platform has upped the ante on data centre fibre infrastructure as well. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind BICSI attendees that we can’t forget about the copper.
CommScope is proud to support the show as a BICSI corporate member and pleased that two of our technical experts will be featured speakers:
Rodney Casteel will speak on two panels: The Fabulous, Fast Moving, Fever Pitch, Forever Accelerating Fibre Frenzy and Testing High Speed Fibre Links during pre-conference workshops.
