The views from the CIX Mast
7
Jun
2007
Jun
2007
As well as building a data centre, we in CIX are also erecting a 24m mast on our site.
The mast will be unique in the region in that it will have complete redundancy around power and connectivity. The mast is also situated on top of a hill with incredible line-of-sight in 360 degrees.
I took some photos yesterday (6th June ’07) from 10m above ground (not quite half the height of the mast) to see just how good the visibility of the mast will be.
I posted the photos on the mast’s page but, for example, looking East-South-East from 10m above the mast’s site you can see the former IFI plant on Great Island (8 miles as the crow flies)!:
June 24th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Forgive me for what may sound like an innocent question; but is there not an issue locating high power RF equipment so close to sensitive electronic equipment?
May 8th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Hi John,
I just noticed that we never reponded to your question. The kind of comms equipent that will be installed on the mast will be low power. Also, most of it will be directional. A local radio station wanted to locate a 10kW omnidirectional FM transmitter on the mast and we declined. Interestingly, we were not worried about interference to the data processing equipment in the data centre. We were worried about interference with the low power comms equipment that will be loacated on the mast.
OK John, we didn’t have worries about RF interference but we did about lightning discharges to the mast being conducted or induced in data or power cables and doing damage in the data centre as a result. For this reason we installed eight separate racks at the base of the mast for amplifier and MUX equipement. No metal cabling is allowed from there to the data centre. We insist on using fiber cabling for these links as they cannot conduct electricity.