Several key criteria should be discussed and considered before specifying a particular enclosure for deployment. Included are enclosure technical design, durability and flexibility.
Thermal management is one of the most signiicant aspects of enclosure design. Temperature related design criteria are even more critical when wide temperature variations are considered. Such conditions can result from either large disparity between day and night time ambient temperatures or extreme seasonal fluctuations. Solar loading and extreme wind conditions also complicate thermodynamics.
Additional considerations include segmentation within the enclosure to isolate temperature sensitive components from heat generating electronics. Enclosures must serve to protect sensitive and costly network hardware from dust, moisture and insects, in often very demanding environmental conditions.
Material choice and fabrication techniques are of importance. Most Alpha Group enclosures are aluminum, ISO controlled, weather resistant and have powder coated finishes. These attributes allow for maximizing service life of both the enclosures themselves and the network equipment they house.
The strategic significance of choosing a qulity enclosure is becoming more important in recent years as it is becoming increasingly difficult and more costly to obtain enclosure placement easements. WWith already limited pole space, utility and private easements are both scarce and expensive. Enclosure security is also a critical consideration. The cost of netwrok hardware certainly warrants appropriate protection from potential vandals, thieves and intruders.
Another important enclosure selection criterion is the ability to meet both current and future network needs. Ideally an enclosure should have the ability to grow with network requirements.
Scalability is a critical factor when considering the addition of expanded communication services. Many network business models work only if scalability will allow the system to grow incrementally as additional revenue generating communication services are added. Replacing network hardware is much more capital intensive than installing a platform that can grow incrementally as new services and subscriber bases increase.
Mounting flexibility is also a factor. Having the option of either pole or ground mounting enclosures, while retaining common connections and equipment shelves, assists network personnel in both the installation and maintenance processes.
For maintenance personnel, the enclosure needs to be service friendly and accessible, meaning that housed equipment and network connections must be easily and conveniently reachable.
Other important flexibility criteria include size and color choice. With increasing regulatory pressure from individual municipalities to limit the amount of visible hardware intrusion, the ability to make network hardware installations blend into their surrounding is key. Low profile or small footprint enclosures may allow network operators to make the most of smaller easements and limit the amount of hardware visibility.
Enclosure color choice, while a seemingly benign issure, can work miracles in helping otherwise obtrusive enclosures blend into their surroundings, and greatly reduce heat build-up in the enclosure.
While enclosure choice may not be the most exciting or compelling element of network technology deployment, appropriate selection is critical to both system reliability and longevity.
An enclosure's value is only as good as its ability to protect its contents. Enclosure technical design, durability and flexibility should be the key criteria in the selection process.
