Hirschmann was selected to supply IP networking devices for a new type of building IT infrastructure, called EcoFlex'IT, developed by Ingetel-bet, a French IT consulting firm. Installed a few months ago in several large office buildings across the country by Exprimm'IT, one of Hirschmann's French partners, EcoFlex'IT drastically reduces the carbon footprint and energy consumption of IT networks and is also exceptionally versatile.
The first EcoFlex'IT network, operational since December 2010, manages more than 700 users daily and many other connected devices, such as personal computers, IP phones and videoconferencing equipment, shared printers and fax machines, and WiFi and DECT access points.
The building where it is installed, an 8-story, 11,813 m² building, has a single IT room that houses the main distribution frame. The IT cabling and network are organized as follows:
- All building cabling is centralized in a single distribution cabinet where the cabling components occupy only 16U of the 42U of height in each rack.
- There are eight optical rings, one for each floor, from the ground floor to the seventh floor, installed in raised floors. They are connected to the building's distribution frame via IT shafts (IT technical conduits).
- Each ring is equipped with four or five active consolidation points (ACPs), depending on the work area of that floor, which are installed in a rack integrated into the raised floor.
- Each ACP is connected to 12 fiber optic cables coming from the ring's ingress and another 12 coming from the ring's egress. Each ring's ACP acts as a bridge ACP and is therefore connected to the building's distribution frame via 12 additional fiber optic cables, enabling the connection of peripherals to the IP network hub.
Furthermore, each ACP has four twisted-pair connections that ensure the distribution of TDM links and carry the ACP box's dry contact for opening to the dry-contact IP bridges located in the distribution frame and connected to the IP network, which is managed by the network management platform.
The twisted-pair distribution from the distribution frame to the ACP is handled by multi-pair cables connected to a patch panel in the distribution frame (one RJ45 rack for each ring) and a dedicated module installed in the IT shaft on each floor. From there, they are connected to each ACP via a 4TP cable attached to a 4-RJ45 box located in the ACP box.
Each ACP box distributes all user IT terminal devices within its distribution area, which corresponds to a surface area of approximately 200 m².
Each ACP box can house one or two standard DIN or 19” ring switches, providing the capacity to distribute from 4 to 48 downlink ports to user terminals in its distribution area using Hirschmann MACH or RS series devices.
The customer selected Hirschmann MACH102 switches with Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) modules and the new Hirschmann MACH104 switch range. The complete installation uses more than 65 switches and 90 PoE modules to deliver a green solution for the entire building. This underscores Hirschmann’s commitment to the ongoing development of green solutions for Industrial Ethernet applications.
The direct and indirect contribution to global sustainability of all Hirschmann switches is assessed at each stage of their design and manufacture, and also during their installation, in order to ensure that the environmental impact and carbon footprint they produce are as low as possible.
As Wolfgang Schenk, Managing Director of Hirschmann Automation and Control GmbH, points out, by emphasizing the greenest products in the Hirschmann range, we help customers make the right choices: “We believe this action is a step in the right direction. Hirschmann has introduced several activities and initiatives at its manufacturing facility in Neckartenzlingen aimed at ensuring that we supply our customers with the greenest possible products. The ‘GreenChoice’ initiative more than fulfills our management’s objective of offering the most environmentally friendly products on the market.”
Wolfgang Schenk: “Projects like these help us increase our knowledge and capabilities and allow us to offer our customers worldwide ‘GreenChoice’ products and solutions.”
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Article provided by Belden
