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Features
Responding to Tomorrow's Technology
6/4/2004
When campus expansion called for the construction of the new Hixson-Lied Science Building, Brokofsky specified the Blolite blown optical fiber system to connect the new building to the campus network. Creighton University’s recently renovated Rigge Science Center and Criss Medical School are also connected to the network via several spare and populated tubes and nearly 70,000 feet of Blolite fiber.
Following completion of the new science complex, Creighton University adopted a new network standard of at least one Microduct tube for every room. “At least one outlet in every classroom, office, and laboratory will have a spare tube for future fiber connectivity,” says Brokofsky. “Our minimum standard to the renovated residence life areas consists of three Category 6 cables, one coaxial connection for CATV, and one Microduct tube.”
Creighton University is one of the first educational institutions to bring blown optical fiber into residence halls to ensure that students continue to have 24/7 access to the latest technology in all areas of the campus. Three new multi-bedroom residence halls for junior and senior students are connected to the network with blown fiber and include one empty tube to every “pillow” as part of the new standard.
A Future Cost Advantage
Information technology improves and strengthens all aspects of the academic environment. As computing applications become central to student life, enhanced teaching, better research, and improved administration operations, all members of the university will continually require improved technology, network uptime, and increased bandwidth. Therefore, the process of planning a campus network requires participation of all stakeholders and a funding strategy that covers continual network growth. A blown fiber system is a financially strategic approach that provides built-in network capacity.Future network requirements can be difficult to determine, and Brokofsky admits that choosing a blown fiber system has put an end to the uncertainty of how many and what types of fiber to install. By allowing the university to install only the fiber needed today and easily add fiber to spare tubes in the future, blown fiber eliminates the cost, time, and guesswork associated with future proofing by installing dark (unused) fiber.
Because technology is rapidly evolving and academic environments like Creighton are prone to frequent moves, adds, and changes (MACs), the ideal campus network should easily accommodate modifications and the replacement of obsolete technology with as little downtime as possible. With a blown fiber system, the existing infrastructure of tube pathways is already in place, which means minimal disruption to the physical environment of the campus during MACs. “Adding additional blown fiber requires much less labor cost than installing conventional fiber optic cable and allows us to get the network up and running that much faster. It’s not at all disruptive to our campus life,” says Brokofsky.
In a Blolite optical fiber system, obsolete fiber can be easily blown out of populated tubes and new fiber blown back into empty tubes when network requirements have changed.
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