September 14, 2009

News From Foss Communications & Security

The University of South Dakota in Vermillion began construction of their new Beacom School of Business in early 2008. It is a three story, 69,000sq ft building with latest technology and classroom amenities available to students and staff alike. When the progress of the construction allowed our technicians to start pulling cable the deadline was already quickly approaching. Basically, we were facing a nine week deadline to pull 40 miles of Cat6, terminate, and test a total of 1400 individual cables …no easy task.

The majority of our cables were terminated in wall plates much like you see every day in offices and homes. Over 300 data ports were integrated in student seating to ensure every student has connectivity to the internet and the schools internal network. The other portion of the cables (roughly 200) were spread out in cubical style furniture, floor boxes, and wireless access points throughout the building leaving no area of the building without access to the “outside world.”

All of the cables we pulled were routed to one of three data rooms in the facility. Each room has a number of equipment racks where all of the interconnecting takes place which allows the IT Department at the school to make each port in the building “live” with either a voice or data connection. To connect each of these rooms we pulled 12 strands of fiber optic cable and either a 25 pair or a 50 pair copper cable to extend the phone lines. We managed to do all of this work in less than nine weeks and met the deadline with time to spare which is quite remarkable and is a testament to the quality of technicians we employ at Foss Communications. Shown are just two photos from the project which will give you some sense of the neatness and attention to detail that is a standard of our work.