Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1043933
52 I ICT TODAY mation of enterprise businesses and their buildings (see Figure 4). POL network design ensures ICT professionals a graceful and cost-effective means with which to grow their network connectivity in response to smart building IoT demand by leveraging the optical LAN system and superior cabling capacity. POL relies on singlemode (SMF) cabling from the main data center through the cable risers, through the horizontal pathways, and as close to the digital devices as possible. SMF cable bandwidth is tremendous and is measured in terabits today, far greater than copper cables' capacity measured in Gbs. With this greater capacity, the lifespan of SMF is expected to exceed twenty-five years, whereas copper cables historically have been ripped and replaced every five to seven years. Similarly, the optical LAN system and its components, such as passive optical splitters, already provide a graceful and conflict-free migration to 10Gb, 40Gb and 100Gb capacity. Optical LAN has greater gigabit Ethernet density in a smaller footprint and scalability to support thousands of future smart intelligent building IoT applications. Finally, POL has centralized intelligence and management to control the thousands of IoT connected devices in a more machine-to-machine (M2M) and plug-and-play approach. FIGURE 4: An example of better scalability for IoT and smart buildings with the optical LAN architecture.