DZS FiberLAN: Innovative, Next-Generation Communications Solutions for Enterprise, Campus, Hospitality and Multi-Tenant Use Cases

Many savvy real estate developers and commercial property owners realize that providing their end-user tenants and customers with superior communications and collaboration experiences can be a differentiator and offer significant competitive advantages. As part of their overall enterprise communications strategy, they are increasingly recognizing that now is the time to make the leap from legacy copper-based network infrastructure to fiber. The return on investment through service excellence and cost savings are too good to ignore, as are the user experience and maintenance penalties for failing to upgrade.

Aligning all the sales, engineering and implementation factors to deliver an exceptional user experience within the unique complexities and requirements of an existing building or campus is challenging, especially when you also have to consider preserving current investments, minimizing disruption to users, harmonizing with building aesthetics and dealing with construction and renovation timelines.

DZS’ experience in successfully addressing the broad range of highly specific and dynamic customer needs within enterprises, campuses, multi-tenant configurations, sports arenas and other smaller scale Passive Optical Networking (PON) deployments led to the creation of our unique FiberLAN offering.

Benefits of upgrading to PON for building/campus scale deployments

Just as with large-scale networks that span cities, regions, and communities, operators upgrading in-building or campus scale networks from legacy copper to optical fiber can expect extremely compelling savings, reliability, maintenance and efficiency gains.

Here are some comparative points to consider:

• Fiber is much lighter, more compact, and cheaper than copper, so it saves on costs and space.
• PON configurations are generally point-to-multi-point (one-to-many), and thus require far fewer hardware elements like power systems and active switches to connect
• Copper-based networks usually require a wire between every device in the building. With fiber, a single splitter location off a single trunk fiber can serve hundreds of endpoints using a fraction of the material and complexity.
• Because it requires less gear, fiber draws much less power than copper, so facilities need less cooling as well. This makes fiber a “greener” choice as well as a major cost saver.
• Fiber is dielectric/neutral, so unlike copper wire it’s not susceptible to electrical interference.
• In theoretical terms, copper-based networks support a maximum transmission rate of about 40 Gigabits per second (Gbps) while fiber can carry data at close to the speed of light. This makes fiber future-proof and gives it “deploy once, use forever” bandwidth potential.
• Fiber is definitely the future in terms of software-defined network and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) solutions.

FiberLAN isn’t just for the enterprise

While enterprises and corporate campuses have been at the forefront of deploying smaller scale PON infrastructures, many other scenarios offer similar cost/benefit profiles. These include hotels and resorts, college campuses, convention centers, casinos, multi-subscriber apartment buildings or apartment blocks, multi-tenant office buildings and more.

A particularly interesting application is sports arenas. Mercedes Benz Stadium, home of the Atlanta Falcons National Football League (NFL) franchise, Banc of California Stadium, home of the Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC), and Bank of America Stadium, home of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, are great examples of how DZS FiberLAN deployments enable immersive fan communications experiences with the latest in WiFi-based technology.

Supporting arbitrary customization

Enterprise, campus and other high-capacity venue fiber installations typically require a high degree of customization to support specialized applications, diverse network gear, particular protocols, and differing redundancy needs. Requirements for things like WiFi management and authentication software are also highly specific. DZS has architected FiberLAN to support virtually any potential use case in terms of custom requirements.

DZS also offers our FiberLAN customers a supportive sales cycle, including connection with system integrators and other third-party specialists whose expertise adds so much value to each unique DZS FiberLAN journey.

Next steps

To start a conversation on how we can support your in-building or campus PON upgrade from design to implementation, contact DZS.