More Security for Less
Florida college tackles environmental challenges to create successful emergency network
- By Bill McCoy
- Aug 01, 2010
Although there has only been one true emergency call over
the 12-year life of its Code Blue system, Seminole State
College of Florida takes security seriously. Seminole State is
the fastest-growing college in the state, with campuses in
Altamonte Springs, Heathrow, Oviedo and Sanford/Lake
Mary. With Code Blue systems installed in parking lots and
on campus buildings, students and campus staff have ready
access to emergency phones.
The Lightning Dilemma
Florida’s combination of frequent lightning strikes and relatively
high water tables was contributing to frequent emergency
phone system failures at Seminole State, particularly on the
Oviedo Campus.
With a shallow water table that was only 1.5 feet below the
surface, lightning strikes were being conducted through the
ground and to the copper wiring, burning out the outdoor
phones. This was an expensive and frustrating problem, but
solving it provided Seminole State with an opportunity to rethink
the entire security network.
Opportunity for Change
Originally, the emergency phones were linked to a central PBX
using 25-pair Cat-5e copper wiring. A separate fiber-optic and
copper system linked surveillance cameras.
In addition to the lightning problem, deployment and maintenance
costs for the two systems were high. The camera network
used fiber cabling with a star-topology cabling solution that also
drove up costs for new camera installations.
The IP-Based Solution
Seminole State began deploying a system based on its new security
strategy in 2008. The result provided enhanced reliability,
integrated phone and camera services, and reduced cabling costs.
Seminole State was able to replace much of the copper
cabling for the phone system with an IP-based system running
over a fiber-optic ring, which connected all the phones and
bandwidth-intensive video surveillance cameras. The fiber was
terminated above the watertable line on the camera and phone
towers. The ring topology allows for greater redundancy using a
self-healing RSTP-2004 protocol that can bypass any single point
of failure in the ring.
The IP-based network with its ring topology is easily scalable
to support continued growth. A fiber loop, or ring, is created
by looping two fiber strands from pole to pole. Another pair of
strands is spliced from beginning to end. The last switch in the
loop is connected to the previous switch and to the switch in the
communications closet. Since fiber does not conduct electricity,
the extended use of fiber cabling, combined with a more aggressive
grounding strategy -- which included a lightning rod on each
tower -- solved the lightning issue.
The new surveillance system uses Code Blue CB1 emergency
phone towers, Axis fixed day/night IP cameras and GarrettCom
Magnum Ethernet switches for the networking system. The IP
cameras are positioned so that all the Code Blue phones, in addition
to the parking areas themselves, are visually monitored.
Today, the Heathrow and Altamonte campuses have full coverage
in both the parking lots and in the buildings. Oviedo has full coverage except in the outlying parking lots. Full video and
phone coverage is designed into new building construction on the
Sanford/Lake Mary campus.
Cisco ATA-186 analog telephone adapters allow Seminole
State to continue to use its previously purchased analog CB1
phones over a VoIP network. Each phone tower contains an ATA
186 connected to a Magnum switch for communication.
Small footprint GarrettCom magnum 6KQ managed Ethernet
switches are installed in each of the light poles or Code Blue
phone towers. The magnum switches, with built-in fiber and copper
ports, each support multiple cameras, which reduced cost and
complexity over the old system. Formerly, each camera location
was equipped with its own fiber cable and required transceivers
on each end to convert to copper for the cameras.
To withstand the oven-like heat build-up and humidity of the
Florida campuses, the system required an industrially hardened,
fully-enclosed switch with robust management capabilities. Different
areas required different solutions, so it was important to
find a switch with maximum port flexibility. For example, in the
installation at the Sanford/Lake Mary campus, the north parking
lot was networked using Gigabit fiber and copper while the
south parking lot and the public safety lot were networked using
100 MB fiber and copper. Within each pole or tower, six-strand
fiber cable is used, with two strands allocated for normal traffic.
One switch on the ring connects to the main campus monitoring
station, where a magnum 6K25e switch was deployed via another
pair of fiber strands.
Reduced Costs, Reduced Complexity
The college now has a more reliable system that significantly
reduced deployment and maintenance costs. In addition to improved
uptime, campus security can constantly monitor for system
failures through an automated alarm system. With the old
system, there were two ways outages were reported: after the
monthly security check or when someone realized that a device
was not working. Now a Nogios server -- a Linux-based, opensource
infrastructure monitoring server -- checks all managed
switches every 10 minutes. When problems occur, the network
analyst is immediately notified via e-mail or text message. SNMP
traps are stored on a syslog server for each switch and are available
to help troubleshoot issues.
Despite the system’s elegance, many installers have recommended
reverting to the previous design. Some of them have
gone so far as to say the solution defined in Seminole State RFQs
could not possibly work. As facilities begin to demand IP-based
security and surveillance solutions, they -- and the installers -- are
in for a pleasant surprise.
This article originally appeared in the August 2010 issue of Network-Centric Security.
About the Author
Bill McCoy is a senior network analyst at Seminole State College of Florida.