It’s not easy to pull cable in a lot of environments, especially in older buildings where every hole in the wall requires dealing with hazardous materials such as asbestos.
Rather than having to pull out HAZMAT suits to pull cable, ADTRAN this week announced it has developed a switch that can deliver 10/100 Mbps Ethernet over legacy cabling.
According to Barry Derrick, product marketing manager for ADTRAN, the NetVanta 1235P Ethernet Switch with ActivReach makes it possible to use CAT5, CAT3 or even copper wiring in conjunction with Ethernet.
ADTRAN’s ActivReach technology extends the reach of Ethernet between switches to 488 meters versus the traditional 100 meter limitation of most Ethernet switches. Derrick says that approach significantly reduces the total number of switches required inside any environment, which serves to bring down the total cost of upgrading the Ethernet network.
Of course, most organizations would rather run fiber throughout their environment. But in a lot of cases, that simply isn’t feasible. With ActivReach, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the organization has to do without high-speed Ethernet.