Lantegra Cabling Solution

Lantegra Cabling Solution at the Asheville Regional Airport Maintenance Bldg

In 2004, AVL chose Lantegra structured cabling solution for its maintenance building and fiber run to the tarmac. The information transport system requirements consisted of nine quad drops (four LAN cables per outlet) for each office and another twelve dual drops. They also needed three CATV outlets for televisions.  Single-mode fiber had already been run to the building for connectivity to the rest of the network.

The AVL staff was impressed with the Lantegra system for a variety of reasons. First of all, the twenty-five-year warranty was welcome. Secondly, the fact that the Superior Modular Products factory was a thirty-minute drive from the airport convinced them that the warranty would be well supported. Category 5e was specified for the building. The ability to handle gigabit speeds and support the latest versions of POE while still offering substantial savings in price and pathway space over category 6 made it a better alternative. They reasoned that since there was currently nothing on the market that category 5e did not support with ample headroom, it was both cost-effective and technically sound.

The Hitachi category 5e cable was specified in two colors; blue for data and gray for voice. This would provide for easier cable identification in future troubleshooting scenarios. Since the Superior Modular UMJ model jacks are installed with bezels, they were able to utilize a blue bezel for the data and a gray bezel for the voice. Thus the color-coding remained intact to the visible portion of the telecommunication outlet. The blue bezels were eight positions sized for the RJ-45 connectors of the data jacks. The gray bezels were sized for a six-position RJ-11 jack for voice. This permitted a snug fit for the telephone patch cords, and it also allowed for them to be replaced by eight position bezels at some later date when the airport switched over to voice over IP (VOIP).

A weather sensor on the tarmac needed twelve strands of the multi-mode fiber run to it. We helped the airport IT department choose OCC loose tube outdoor fiber. The gel-filled fiber provides the best weather and water protection and the fiber run was underground for 85% of the installation. There was a short stretch where the outdoor rated fiber was in the ceiling, but the NEC and local codes allow for the outdoor cable to run through a ceiling for up to fifty feet. SC connectors were chosen for the installation, and an SMP-12 enclosure was utilized on the tarmac.