FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 16, 2009

Former FOLS Chair Co-authors The Complete Guide to Copper and Fiber Optic Networking

Andrew Oliviero, Senior Manager, Product Management Optical Fiber Products of OFS, and previous Chair of the Fiber Optic LAN Section, has co-authored the book Cabling: The complete Guide to Copper and Fiber-Optic Networking, 4th edition (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

LAN networks and cabling can be a confusing topic; it has its own language, acronyms, standards, and choices of fiber, cable and connector types. This book was designed for information industry professionals and students taking introductory courses in LAN Networks and Cabling who can use this book to gain a better understanding and appreciation of a structured cabling system and where each media choice is optimum.

The book’s topics run the gamut of LAN networks and cabling with a focus on premise cabling standards, fiber-optic, copper, wireless media, network equipment, cabling-system design and installation, and cable-connector installation. With so many fiber-optic cabling options, the focus was placed on describing the value of certain fiber, cable and connector types by application and usefulness of the centralized cabling standard and FTTE topologies.

In the book Oliviero pointed to the TIA's Fiber Optics LAN Section as an excellent resource for learning about fiber and for the usefulness of their cost-models to make cost comparison between fiber and copper based architectures.

Oliviero was contacted by the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, based on his involvement in BICSI, TIA TR-42 standards groups, and having been chair of TIA’s Fiber Optics LAN Section. It’s a good thing, as the previous authors of the third edition were very biased to copper networking and prolonged the myth that fiber-optic networking is too complicated and expensive.

The majority of the work on the fourth edition involved updating this book based on the Telecommunications Industry Association’s new edition of the ANSI/TIA-568-C series of standards for commercial building networks. Andrew helped develop this standard through his efforts in TIA TR-42. This and other associated standards have been updated in this book. As expected, this has led to new cable media, topologies and network applications.

Overall, this book can benefit the industry as it will teach a new generation of network designers and installers the advantages of fiber-optic based networking. With emphasis on OM3 and OM4 fiber, and the move to 40 and 100 Gbps networking speeds in LAN and Data Center Enterprise networks, this book is an excellent resource on what to expect from next-generation LAN systems.

 

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