Turning LANS on Their Head
Passive Optical LAN solutions offer up a next-generation LAN story for the enterprise.
Local area networks in the enterprise haven’t gone through much of a revolution during the last two decades. Thousands of feet of copper cables and labyrinths of switches have made their way throughout the corporate campus in that time, but new technology – or rather established technology used in a new way – is giving the enterprise a compelling story when it comes to cost, range, reliability and security of the Local Area Network (LAN).
The same technology that is giving Verizon a competitive edge in bringing fiber-based, quality-intensive video and data services – called FiOS – to its customers has now come to the enterprise. Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (GPON), or Passive Optical LAN (POL), as it is known in the enterprise, also has the power to dramatically change the economics of LANs in the enterprise.
“This is real and proven technology available today,” said Floyd Wagoner, director of product marketing with Motorola. “We are talking about the elimination of up to 50 percent of a current network architecture’s components and related complexity. By greatly simplifying the enterprise network you can drive a tremendous amount of capital and operational expenses right out of the traditional LAN model.”
With an economy struggling to get back on its feet, most enterprises continue to have the strict mandate to do more with less money and resources. For the corporate IT manager, the challenges lie in meeting the ever increasing network needs of employees all while IT budgets, personnel and building space are decreasing. Hence, enterprises in a wide range of segments are willing to jump outside of the traditional LAN box as they look to expand their networking capabilities, Wagoner added.
Fiber has historically had the reputation of being too expensive and complicated for LAN applications in the enterprise, but new methods of distributing all-fiber technology have evolved, said Wagoner, resulting in functionality that outperforms LAN performance at about 50 percent or more of the cost of the traditional LAN infrastructure in both capital expenditure and total cost of ownership (TCO). Motorola’s research shows that for an enterprise with 1,000 users, CapEx expenses are 48 percent less than a traditional LAN installation while TCO in five years offers a 57 percent savings over traditional LAN approaches. The number grows exponentially as the campus size grows.
“We provide a cost disruptive value proposition, and we’re finding CIOs are willing to listen to our story.” Wagoner said.
What is the secret? A surprisingly simple architecture. A Passive Optical LAN is a point-to-multipoint network in which a single enterprise aggregation switch provides more than 7,000 IP voice, data and video network connections to any Ethernet-based device or system (A smaller density solution serving the small and medium enterprise is also available).
Instead of Ethernet copper cables, POL uses an all-fiber distribution network supported by passive optical splitters that cascade out network connections to each of an enterprise’s floors and subsequently to the POL connection points called Work Group Terminals (WGT). Instead of wiring closets and workgroup switches, four port WGTs, the size of a DSL or cable modem, are placed throughout the LAN and provide 10/100/100bT Ethernet connectivity. Wireless networks can easily be accommodated by plugging the wireless access point into any available port of a WGT.
“It’s a connectivity model versus a router or switch model,” Wagoner said. “With POL enterprises can eliminate all of the cooling, power and battery back-up requirements along with the tens to hundreds of square feet of floor space currently used in a traditional LAN configuration.”
“Beyond the elimination of cooling and power, it’s also about resource utilization,” Wagoner said. “IT professionals needed to manage complex and multi-tiered LAN systems today can now be redirected to more strategic programs that support business growth, not cost containment. If the enterprise has half of the equipment to deploy and manage, they can be more effective with the current IT resources.”
Passive Optical LAN technology is beginning to take hold within government agencies, not only because of the cost savings, but also because of the secure nature of optical fiber. A Passive Optical LAN is inherently more secure than an Ethernet LAN for the simple reason that optical fiber does not conduct electricity like copper. Electrically based services are known points of security risk. Further, Passive Optical technology supports security mechanisms such as advanced encryption standard (AES) 128-bit encryption and 802.1x authentication between the enterprise aggregation switch and the workgroup terminals.
“While the economic arguments of such an architecture are compelling, many enterprises are not ready to rip out and replace their copper cable or abandon the traditional LAN switching environment,” Wagoner said. As enterprises investigate ways to reduce costs or simplify LAN operations, POL can be deployed where incremental growth is occurring and certainly in Greenfield environments.
All of this is good news for both the service provider and value added reseller (VAR) communities, which are looking for ways to penetrate further into the enterprise, and they can do that with a next-generation technology proposition that offers disruptive CapEx and OpEx savings over traditional LAN approaches. Service providers and VARs have the opportunity to design or provide more than just the high-speed data link and become more entrenched in the enterprise, Wagoner said. Motorola has seen early success in the government sector via the value added reseller model. He added that enterprises are beginning to realize that fiber, once an expensive proposition, has the opportunity to turn the economics of the LAN on its head.
“The evolution of fiber and its mass deployment has brought the cost of all-fiber enterprise technology down,” said Wagoner, “making Passive Optical LAN technology the enterprise LAN next-generation story.”
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