Corporate_{Fiber backbone access}

Situation

Many corporations, such as financial institutions, need to be located in downtown hubs to stay in close contact with key clients and remain up-todate on current business trends. High occupancy levels within these areas has led to the proliferation of the high-rise. And these mega-story buildings present a unique communications challenge.

Problem

Many multi-story buildings have fiber cable backbones-the cabling duct that runs from floor-to-floor. This cable is usually installed during building construction. As requirements change installing new fiber throughout an existing high-rise is expensive, time-consuming, and often impossible [due to the minimal physical capacity of the existing riser pipe]. The challenge then is to give users throughout the building access to the fiber backbone without having to add substantial amounts of cabling or networking hardware.

Solution

Typically, the riser in a multi-story building contains bundles of copper pairs which are unused, but generally are not considered for networking applications due to quality concerns. The use of this copper is possible with HDSL. PairGain's Campus-REX units are placed at the data center where one end of the cable terminates, and other units are placed at each floor where connectivity is required.