Network diversity can mean different things to different people and is ultimately shaped by a building’s physical parameters.
True / full diversity (in terms of fibre provision), would see carriers providing services to a building from multiple building entry points (BEP’s), to individual communications rooms, via separate/distinct cable routes.
From each communications room, the cable would run independently to the end customer tenancy via separate/distinct communications risers.
Often, a site will not be able to provide true diversity for a tenant; it may offer some physical attributes of the above, such as multiple risers, entry points or MDFs.
Some other considerations for fibre connectivity diversity in a building include:
- Carrier diversification, one of the easiest and often most acceptable solutions is for a tenant to opt for a second service via a different carrier. Whilst the path from the building entry point to the tenancy is likely to be the same as the primary carrier, given that network points of failure are often not due to issues within the property itself, a second carrier option is seen a good diversification option.
Utilising individual carriers / fibre providers for the primary and secondary connections should provide a high level of resilience against an outage that affects a provider’s entire / regionalised network (the core infrastructure).
- Single Carrier, exchange / duct diversity, certain carriers may also be able to provide diversity beyond the property boundary, which would involve a carrier having two distinct services within the property (albeit, using the same BEP, communications room and riser), that follow two routes from the BEP to two separate exchanges / nodes within the network.
Development Considerations
Diversified communications infrastructure should be considered within a development, as an increasing number of customers require 24 by 7 connections with minimal to absolutely no network downtime. When developing a new location or repurposing / refurbishing an existing property, consideration should be given the following:
- Multiple building entry points (e.g. on either side of the property), further facilitating the continued separation of the geographic route for fibre:
- The individual entry points should have dedicated / separate communications rooms, allow each of the carriers / service providers to deploy appropriate equipment, separately. The switches, hardware, and associated equipment for a secondary connection is then accommodated in a separate dedicated room from the primary carriers equipment.
- Building should accommodate multiple cable routes throughout the property, with diverse risers, that provides the carriers to deploy “break-out” boxes
Large multi-national companies, or those with extremely sensitive data (e.g. banks, solicitors, large online stores) may also wish their cables to be further protected within a property via the utilisation of steel conduit.
The developer / property owner should consider the need to accommodate such additional requirements, when identifying their target market for tenants.