Video delivered over CAT 5: cable television, telephone and data are all distributed from the...

The University of Florida's Health Sciences Center (HSC) in Gainesville occupies more than two million square feet in 14 buildings that serve the university's medical, dental, nursing and three other colleges. The complex has approximately 7,500 network drops, which are primarily used for data,

Additional equipment was recently installed to bring HealthNet to 80 more locations in a new facility called the health professions, nursing and pharmacy building. Users can view presentations, even on runs as long as 330 feet, through the Lynx Video Network (LVN), from Lynx Broadband, which delivers video to offices and classrooms on common Category 5 cable. Lynx Broadband is a division of BH Electronics, headquartered in Minneapolis.

Hansford Tyler, HSC's business manager for academic information systems and support, initially saw the product at a trade show, mad calls it "a clever way to serve our customers without installing additional cable. We get the cable signal to our main data distribution closets and form there we use exactly the same system as we use for data distribution. Cable television, telephone and data are all distributed from the same wiring closets and all go out on CAT 5 cables."

The centerpiece of the LVN is a passive broadband balun, which converts an unbalanced coaxial signal into a balanced signal that travels on a CAT 5 cable. An identical balun at the TV end reverses the process. The product uses air analog signal that does not travel over the data network, and consequently does not use rely bandwidth or slow down the network.

"We knew up front that classrooms in the new building would need cable television," Tyler says, "but instead of coax we designed a cable plan using CAT 5 for voice, video and data that lets us provide cable TV at very little additional cost. We pulled coax to the closets and connected it to the Lynx hubs, and from there everything was distributed on CAT 5."

HSC staff did the installation, which uses 10, eight-port LVN hubs. A key consideration in HSC's decision to expand its LVN was the product's flexibility compared to coax, especially when adding or changing locations of TVs in a room. Tyler simply runs a patch cord from an unused port on a distribution hub to the appropriate port on a patch panel, and then installs a single port converter behind the TV. "The solution helps us serve our customers quickly and efficiently, without installing lots of additional cable," Tyler says.

HSC uses coax to deliver video between its new buildings, but uses CAT 5 for distribution within the buildings. "All we had to do was to pull coax to the closets, connect it to the hubs and route signals through the LVN to the designated outlets," adds Tyler.

"HealthNet is a customer-service operation," says Elizabeth Duncan, director of HealthNet. "We were established 11 years ago to help people get voice, video and data services installed quickly and easily. We operate much like a phone or cable TV company. If instructors or staff people need service, we use the existing infrastructure to get them up and running as quickly as possible."

Cable TV can be installed quickly, even in older parts of the complex, according to Tyler, because CAT 5 cable is already installed for the data network. "Putting a cable TV signal on an existing cable saves time and money for our customers," he says.

Video over CAT 5

Lynx Broadband products are used for distributing video from multiple sources, including cable TV, satellite TV, off-air TV, DVDs, VCRs and video cameras. Broadband frequency capabilities cover the entire RF spectrum, from 5 MHz to 860 MHz. The Lynx Video Network uses a video balun to deliver broadband video on pair 4 of a Category 5, 5e or 6 cable. Using recommended input signal levels and Category 5e cable, it can simultaneously deliver 60 channels of cable television over distances up to 100 meters (328 feet,) or 134 channels over distances up to 68 meters (225 feet).

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