Ortronics and Berk-Tek

Loma Linda built structured wiring and network distribution components into the City Building Code for several reasons. For years, providers of Internet connectivity made their own wiring plans for residences. Commercial construction often used standards-based premises wiring efforts, but no law governed how wiring was done, or to what industrial grades and standards. Numerous providers of services were free to duplicate or even layer cabling in helter-skelter, often contractor-installed wiring plans.

The Loma Linda Standards mandate that all new construction is wired to a fast network cabling standard (EIA/TIA Technical Service Bulletin 67), which in turn allows the wiring to carry signals as fast as a gigabit per second—among the fastest residential/commercial wiring in the world. This level, called Category 6 for copper cabling, also connects readily through equipment provided by Ortronics to the fiber connection provided to each new residence and commercial building. BerkTek, a fiber and copper cable provider, provided links used in both City Network Operations Center wiring, then through the City’s redundant network paths, via in the city’s numerous intermediate distribution centers. 

The Civic Center Network Operations Center (NOC) is a state-of-the-art facility that, like other intermediate distribution centers around the city, contains provisions for co-location of computer servers, cross-connection equipment, and other components that network systems together. A large amount of fiber to copper cabling interconnect resides in the NOC, as well as cable management systems that organize the communications paths among service provider equipment components.

This commercial-grade equipment standard extends to each new residence and/or commercial building, providing the ability for construction developers to assure long term use and associated building equipment warranties for buyers and lessors.

Each new home in Loma Linda has a miniature intermediate cable distribution center located in the master bedroom closet. This cabinet (Ortronics helped pilot the architecture) is the central cable termination point between the City’s Communications Network, and residential cabling. Cables of numerous varieties are joined together to provide local area residential networking infrastructure that fully mimics those used in commercial structured wiring systems, but with a residential purpose profile.

Each home’s cabling system is designed and mandated to provide a network connection in each living space. The Category 6 cabling used can provide gigabit networking to each jack in each living space. This provides ready connectivity in each area for computers, VoIP phones/equipment, and other networked devices. 

It’s also possible to, and many developer plans have included, video coaxial cable to be distributed to each network jack location as an additional connection point for video. Builder can add numerous options to the cabling plan to add value to the technology provided with the home’s architecture.