INTERNET OF THINGS
15
By Asef Baddar, RCDD, DCD,
Director of Technology, Leviton
Middle East www.leviton.com
As more ‘things’ become
connected, how will networks
handle the increase in demand?
IoT is the network of physical devices capable of collecting
and sharing data through integrated sensors and network
connectivity. While this level of automated connectivity
may seem far off, the truth is it’s already happening. Map
applications provide current travel times and updates for
common destinations like work or home, fully automated
environments already exist and include facilities capable of
smart metering, energy monitoring, and health detection.
How is the rise of IoT affecting network cabling trends?
Wireless devices are a significant contributor to the rise
of IoT. And with the increasing demand for wireless
connectivity, it’s important to have a flexible, scalable, and
reliable structured cabling backbone to support related
bandwidth growth. Existing cabling infrastructures may
not be capable of providing the bandwidth needed for
optimal performance. Many enterprise and mission-critical
networks already rely on more powerful 10 Gb/s speeds over
fibre, with an eye on 40, 100, and even 400 Gb/s for future
upgrades in data centres. With the tremendous growth in
data and data processing, IoT has had the greatest impact
to date on data centres. We’re talking about zettabytes of
data here.
Enterprise data centres, whether they’re privately owned,
with third-party colocation facilities, or hosted through very
large cloud providers — are being planned with long-term
upgradability and migration plans to connect and manage
fog computing outposts, pod-based back-ups, and edge
facilities that get the processing closer to the devices for
faster overall performance.
www.networkseuropemagazine.com