APOLAN: Top Five Reasons Passive Optical LAN Brings Value to New Builds and Network Upgrades

The Association for Passive Optical LAN (APOLAN), the non-profit organization driving both education and adoption for passive optical local area networks (POL), announced the top five reasons enterprise, healthcare, government, hospitality and education facilities and campuses are considering Passive Optical LAN (POL) to deliver immediate and long-term value to their LAN new builds, replacements and upgrades. 
 
“When determining how best to install, upgrade or replace network infrastructure, it is important to consider both the near-term and long-term expenses, as well as overall value,” said Paul Mills, Excel Networking Director of Sales North America and APOLAN Chairman. “Forward-looking industry leaders insist that new systems supported by POL technology address more of their modern connectivity requirements, while minimizing ongoing operational expenses. Compared to traditional copper-based networks, POL can save up to 30-50 percent of capital costs, 50-70 percent of ongoing operational costs, and 90 percent of the rack space while exceeding network security and reliability goals.” 
 
Businesses deploying POL are experiencing long-term savings by reaping the benefits of a converged, future-proof network infrastructure. The top five value-driven benefits of POL are: 
 
1) Capex and Opex savings: Enterprises require solutions that not only lower initial capital expenses, but also reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for the network. From the data center to the user, POL technology enables the enterprise to significantly reduce the cabling infrastructure costs by significantly reducing the number of cable runs. The result is a decrease in overall operational costs and network complexity. The Passive Optical Network (PON) infrastructure also eliminates costly hardware within a network, such as remote switches, as well as reducing costs for provisioning. In addition, the remote power capabilities of POL over composite fiber and power cable eliminates the need for local power and  an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) at the ONT, further reducing complexity and lowering overall total cost of ownership.  
 
2) Reduced space requirements: Cutting back on floor, rack and closet space is extremely important to organizations looking to save. Reduction in floor space lowers operating expenses by reducing overhead costs, such as fire safety, security and HVAC. In addition, the smaller footprint associated with POL technology enables next-generation performance and services in smaller communication closets that may not have been designed for advanced communications equipment. POL also requires fewer communications closets and, in some cases, eliminates them altogether. 
 
3) Future-proof Infrastructure: As a singlemode fiber (SMF) infrastructure, POL virtually future-proofs a network. With its capacity to carry 101 Tbps of full duplex bandwidth, SMF enables  technology upgrades without requiring replacement of the cabling infrastructure, the most expensive part of the upgrade. POL extends the network lifecycle to 10 years or more, enabling gradual, more predictable costs for bandwidth upgrades over the lifetime of the network.  
 
4) Network Service Convergence: Converging all network services is an important value-add feature of POL. The technology enables all services to be delivered across a single infrastructure, eliminating the need for multiple platforms while providing highly scalable high-speed data services to all users. Voice (e.g., analog POTS and VoIP w/PoE), video, video conferencing services, WiFi and cellular access, and monitoring services (e.g., building automation system, security cameras and building sensors) are all supported with POL.

5) Military-Grade Security:With early adopters being the U.S. federal government and the U.S. Department of Defense, POL is a proven, highly secure technology. In comparison to copper-based LANs, which are limited to 300 feet, POL can span up to 12.5 miles without adding mid-span switching electronics, reducing the number of vulnerable access points to which hackers have access. POL also produces no EMI radiation and its ONT component does not store configuration or user information and requires no physical management access. With low human touch operations, POL is far less susceptible to human error, or negligent and malicious human activities. This adds another valuable layer of security not possible with copper networks. 
   
For more information visit http://www.apolanglobal.org/.