Attention in the Terminal

JetBlue meets government mandates in networked security space

  • By Carol Everett Oliver
  • Jun 01, 2009

JetBlue Airways' new Terminal 5 accounts for 30 percent of JFK International airport's total traffic with its 26 gates, capable of handling more than 500 flights daily. Keeping a watch on an estimated 20 million passengers per year who pass through 40 ticket counters and the central security checkpoint— the largest in the United States with 20 screening lanes—was a challenge for the JetBlue security team in planning the terminal's surveillance system.

Separate from the government-mandated TSA system, JetBlue designed its own CCTV system to run parallel with the data and voice cabling. George Adjemian, the manager of security systems, was hired in 2005 during the pre-planning stages to oversee all physical security systems corporate-wide, which encompassed selecting and managing the security systems, including ID Media issuance and control for the airline's more than 12,000 crewmembers and 490 business partners.

It All Comes Together

During the earliest design stages, Gensler, the architectural firm, worked closely with Arup, the design consultant for all IT systems, security, A/V, acoustics and building systems, to ensure a reliable structured cabling solution was selected and installed, guaranteeing 100 percent uptime of critical data, voice and video applications. Arup worked with JetBlue's IT project group to design two integrated parallel networks—one for voice/data and one for analog. Both are interconnected on a redundant fiber-optic backbone solution, the NetClear® MM10. The copper horizontal cabling solution is a Cat-5ebased twisted-pair solution. NetClear solutions include fiber and copper cabling from Berk-Tek, as well as connectivity and physical support products from Ortronics/ Legrand. The NetClear solutions provided JetBlue with a comprehensive warranty for the cabling system because it was installed by Unity Electric, a trained and approved installer.

"There is a magnitude of savings for running the same UTP cable as data and voice and then bridging to the same backbone as compared to running a dedicated camera cable plant of coaxial and twisted pair cables," said Rene Rieder Jr., senior security engineer for Arup. "In addition, it provides JetBlue with a migration path for adding other IP devices in the future without an overhaul of their existing cable plant."

Arup and JetBlue's T5 IT project team specified the connectivity components and cable for all data, voice, video and display system applications. The location of the termination points (telecom rooms) was mapped out and governed by the 100-meter UTP distance limitations to all of the workstation ports, per TIA/EIA and Ethernet standards. Nine TRs were designated for all of the network passive termination and patching, as well as housing the active components such as DVRs, switches, transceivers and servers.

During the construction, Graybar, the selected distributor, staged all the cable and connectivity products onsite in a trailer, which aided in an ahead-of-schedule installation. The fiber-optic cable is terminated into Ortronics' FC Series fiber cabinets, which are housed in the Ortronics' Mighty Mo® cable management racks in the TRs. The fiber-optic cable connects to a network switch and is then connected to the horizontal cabling through Ortronics' Clarity 5E® patch panels.

More than 1.2 million feet of Berk- Tek's LANmark-350™ Cat-5e cable was pulled horizontally to the 4,000 workstation ports for all voice and data, including the 250 camera locations. An average of two cables were pulled to each outlet, with the exception of three ports to the administration offices. Pulling a spare cable to each camera location allows JetBlue to add another device, such as an IP camera, at a later date.

Keeping Up With Technology

By using transceiver technology, the analog cameras can run over Ethernet structured cabling and can be viewed remotely. The switch to IP cameras, if deemed economical and feasible, can easily be achieved over the same cable.

Panasonic fixed and PTZ cameras were installed indoors at the check-in counters, security checkpoints, gates, and central dining and retail area, as well as in the hallways. Also, rugged outdoor Bosch cameras, enclosed in protective housings, were installed and upgraded with wipers and blowers.

Known as a hybrid solution, each camera can be viewed over the network through a power-video-data integration system from NVT and an IP address through the licensed software residing in the Verint hybrid DVR. This system allows video, data and power signals to the camera through a single four-pair UTP cable. Because analog cameras operate over a 75- ohm signal, a coax cable from the camera goes through the NVT video transceiver to match the 100-ohm signal impedance of twisted pair cabling. The horizontal cable then runs to the TR, where it is terminated into the patch panels. From there, a patch cord connects to the NVT integrated power supply and video receiver. A coax cable from the NVT receiver converts the signal back to 75 ohm and connects directly to the Verint DVR/encoder, which stores the video. Using an attached network switch, the video can be viewed on a network monitor or PC with an IP address through the DVR software.

"The key was the capability to view the cameras on my remote laptop in addition to the onsite security guards viewing monitors 24/7," Adjemian said.

Memory and Bandwidth

For video, there are three main fl uctuating factors that contribute to bandwidth allocation of networked cameras—frame rate, resolution and compression. Any one of these three factors can be throttled back to reduce the network bandwidth when needed.

"Because our cameras are on a separate system than the data and voice, we were not experiencing network bottlenecks, but instead we found that with so many cameras, the resolution was affected," Adjemian said. "To alleviate this issue, we installed an additional server to increase the memory, which then allowed us to increase the resolution. In fact, we installed 1 terabyte, which should be enough for quite a while."

The installed structured cabling solution will provide long-term return on investment, as well as provide fl exibility for increasing the memory and bandwidth as technology evolves and as emerging IP applications arise.

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

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