MICROSENS Switches form the IT infrastructure of Erich Utsch AG

Clear-cut Decision, Reliable Operation

No matter which of the four sectors of the company headquarters in Siegen is concerned – be it the administration, construction, production, or logistics department – a reliable IT infrastructure is in demand everywhere. For this reason, the company replaced the existing, star-shaped CAT5 copper cabling by fiber optic up to the offices more than ten years ago. Here – usually in the parapet duct –  the compact MICROSENS MicroSwitches are installed, which feature a 100-Mbps uplink port and several RJ-45 ports for the connection of end devices. In this way, the company prepares itself for future requirements and immediately benefits from the advantages offered by both technologies:

• The fiber optic cabling in the distribution cables and in the horizontal cabling requires less space, is reliable and future-proof.

• Copper connections are provided by default on all end devices, while corresponding fiber optic ports would have to be purchased for the end devices at high costs.

From a recent viewpoint, the decision would again be made in favour of Fiber To The Office, explains Jörg Voosen, the technical project manager who is responsible for the network technology. This became already evident when the administrative building was substantially refurbished in 2011: The fiber optic cabling was completely removed and the server room was implemented as a security cell according to state-of-the-art know-how. The network technology of MICROSENS, in contrast, was completely re-used. The following evaluations were the decisive parameters for this course of action:

• Bandwidth: 100 MBit horizontally to the workplace, 1 GBit in the backbone, and 10 GBit in the server room are still sufficient. The virtualization of the desktops, in particular, even rather led to a reduction of the bandwidth demand in the past year.

• Security: The switches support functions such as MAC access control, which helps to identify and block unauthorized devices in the network immediately. Guest VLANs can be configured which work independent from the core network.

• Management: All MICROSENS components can be configured and monitored simply and clearly via the MICROSENS network management system NMP.

Apart from that, quality plays a decisive role for Jörg Voosen. He cannot remember any outage of a switch in the administrative building and a glance at the monitoring tool shows almost consistent availability rates of 100%. Voosen also regards the operation period as remarkable: "Even MicroSwitches of MICROSENS from the first delivery package of 2004 are still working today without fault."